Kid Cudi opens his trippy, rock speckled sophomore album proclaiming, "I promise you some generation next sh*t". The genre-bending rapper delivers on that brazen promise with a fantastic album of thoughtful, fiery rhymes over spacey rock blended with hip-hop beats and pulsating synth. His ability to effortlessly shift gears from hypnotically barked club banger "Ashin' Kusher" to the eerily soulful "Ghost!" to the slick half-sung, half-rapped "REVOFEV" keeps you glued to the speakers for the duration of the seventeen-track album.
He gives plenty of insight into his life throughout, as on the dangerously addictive "Wild'n Cuz I'm Young" talking of his previous cocaine use, "You live and you learn / Doin' bumps in the day, keepin' blunts to burn", over a slowly thumping, hollow beat. A plucky synth melody dripping over thicker beats immediately follows on "The Mood", a sweaty, sexed-up look at picking up models in the club. Things get a little meta on the slowly swaggering "Mojo So Dope", as he raps about rapping about reality, "I live through words, not metaphors". The raspy verses over the soulful, humming organ are too good to mind much.
Twinkling piano and a ticking beat drive the dreamy "Marijuana", a soulful love song about the drug with the rapid fire flow over the piano reminiscent of Bone Thugs N Harmony before an Isley Brothers-worthy guitar solo aches in. The album makes the most of the handful of guest appearances, with Cee Lo supplying the soaring feel-good hook of "Scott Mescudi Vs. The World". Mary J. Blige lends her unmistakable pipes to the introspective string and synth fuelled "Don't Play This Song" and lightens up the heavy pounding beat of stressed out "These Worries".
Kanye West shows up for the fantastic eighties-flavored pop-rock vibe of "Erase Me", where the two playfully taunt ex-girlfriends who cannot forget them because of their media coverage. St. Vincent fills the indie rock slot, occupied by MGMT on the debut, with creepy backing vocals on the swirling, nightmarish bliss of "Maniac". In the end, Kid Cudi's sophomore album is a wonderfully complex album that rewards multiple listens musically and lyrically.
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