Singer, rapper, songwriter, and producer Kid Cudi is back with his 10th studio album. “Entergalactic” is a complementary set of songs created to fit with an animation series on Netflix with the same name.
“Entergalactic,” the Netflix series, has a star-studded cast of voices. Included are Jaden Smith, Timothy Chalamet, Vanessa Hudgens, Macaulay Culkin, Ty Dolla $ign, and Cudi himself.
The album stands by itself in quality as a separate entity from the series. This album feels like a rewind button for Cudi. It would sonically fit in between his first two “Man On The Moon” albums, which both came out in the late 2000s.
The 15 tracks include features from Steve Aoki, Don Tolliver, 2 Chainz, and a few more. With Cudi returning to an already tried yet true sound while not amending much, you could call this a musical “low risk, low reward.”
There are some bops and some flops. Songs like “Do What I Want” and “Willing To Trust” (featuring Ty Dolla $ign) are stand-out tracks.
As a series, this was excellent for the eyes and heart. Executive producer Kenya Barris said a lot of energy put into this series came from the heart. That it was honestly a passion project.
Cudi said that he feels there is “a void and lack of black love stories in the industry. Along with the struggle of modern dating/new age millennial love.”
“The animations were meant to feel like something that nobody has seen before,” Cudi said. Each song was designed to match the color pallets in the scenes.
“The vision for the animation was to make the frames look like a moving painting,” Director Fletcher Moules shared. “We feel like this is something really, really special. It was made with a lot of love.”
