Man on the Moon: The End of Day - Kid Cudi

After a huge amount of hype with backing from many of the big names in the Hip Hop game, the Cleveland-based Alternative Hip Hop MC KiD CuDi made his debut in 2009 with “Man On The Moon: The End Of Day”. In it you see that you get him moving away from typical conventions of Hip Hop (in that he doesn’t really rap and sings most of the time) and does a similar thing to what had been seen on Kanye West’s fourth album (“808s & Heartbreak” from 2008, ...
...from Common as he runs you through each individual act through Cudi’s world.

1. “In My Dreams” (Intro)

2. “Soundtrack 2 My Life”

Coming off a pretty wack introductory piece where he sets everything up as a futuristic place, you find that as he moves into this one and Emile remains as the producer behind it, he actually does some proper rapping in this one (something that I hadn’t actually heard in one of his ... more

After a huge amount of hype with backing from many of the big names in the Hip Hop game, the Cleveland-based Alternative Hip Hop MC KiD CuDi made his debut in 2009 with “Man On The Moon: The End Of Day”. In it you see that you get him moving away from typical conventions of Hip Hop (in that he doesn’t really rap and sings most of the time) and does a similar thing to what had been seen on Kanye West’s fourth album (“808s & Heartbreak” from 2008, a release Cudi was a part of). You get narration from Common as he runs you through each individual act through Cudi’s world.

1. “In My Dreams” (Intro)

2. “Soundtrack 2 My Life”

Coming off a pretty wack introductory piece where he sets everything up as a futuristic place, you find that as he moves into this one and Emile remains as the producer behind it, he actually does some proper rapping in this one (something that I hadn’t actually heard in one of his tracks up to this point). Here he rhymes about his life and up-bringing and I felt that he did a decent job at it, but it still didn’t get me excited for later on.

**Three Stars**

3. “Simple As...”

In what is a very short one you get lots of experimentation with lost of of-beat stuff coming from Plain Pat’s ideas in the composition and from this you see that Cudi gets to the rhyming and comes in with a flow that seems to fit in with all the current trends, but is undermined by the way he chooses to do things at other times not only in this single track, but in pretty much every other tune that he does.

**One Star**

4. “Solo Dolo”

With this dark one you see that you have him moving things on into the sort of material that I expected to have on the release as we have him take it to a track that Kanye West has been said to have looked up to as one of the best on the release. It doesn’t do it for me as you see that he gets a bit too deep when I’m not really bothered about what he has to say and so he simply put me off by having Emile offer such ominous production as he takes on an alternative persona.

**Two Stars**

5. “Heart Of A Lion”

Free School offer production that sounds much more conventional here and I felt that in spite of this it did very little to save things for him as you see that with this he simply twists things into his own ways where it is kept down by his tendency to sing and do so with haunting, electronic beats that mean nothing unless you can say that you are actually in the right mind state to take it on. He goes into his own world and loses me again with this one.

**One Star**

6. “My World”

On this one you get another joint that seems to have much more of the typical contemporary Hip Hop elements within it, but he twists them in a way so that it prevents some from really getting anything out of it. I can’t say that I enjoyed it as a result as he keeps things on the same sort of level that had been seen on all the tracks leading up to this point and the only thing that makes it different is how he raps properly for much of it.

**One Star**

7. “Day ‘n’ Nite”

Not to be confused with the much more popular Crookers remix, this was the first track I’d heard from him and really I can’t say I did like it until it was remixed. However with time my perception has changed as with the familiarity of the lyrics, now seeing it again as it should have been, I can see the vision within it as he comes out with a spacey tune, but one that is much lighter on the ear than the others that have been heard here.

**Five Stars**

8. “Sky Might Fall”

With production from Kanye West (who clearly isn’t out of his “808s & Heartbreak” mode) you get a tune that I just couldn’t get into due to its similarities to the sound that came from that experimental fourth Kanye West release. I didn’t think that he brought anything new with this one; although others may see it a different way and I just thought that it was another wasted track that loses the momentum the last one created.

**One Star**

9. “Enter Galactic”

You see that in this one you get a massive change to things as he lifts the pace massively with this lively tune. It is one that I can’t say that I was really all that happy with and one that I can’t see many US listeners having fun with either as it has such a heavy Euro-House feel to it (as many Americans dismissed “Day ‘n’ Nite”’s remix as) and so I don’t see any strengths in this track whatsoever as he attempts some spacey club work.

**One Star**

10. “Alive”

As things move into another act, you see that hear we get a grungy Hip Hop set coming through as DC’s Ratatat get involved into the thing and assist the artist as he moves on into more material that I would consider to be samey and doesn’t really move on from where other tunes on the release were. It does very little and although I could feel the synth riff that led it, nothing else was happening for me.

**One Star**

11. “Cudi Zone”

Emile gets back on the beats with this one and you see that with the eighties-inspired synth work, it appears to motivate Cudi to do some straight-forward rapping and shows how well his skills at this end of it all have come along in the couple of years leading up to the release of his debut. Although he does what I want in the verses, with such unimpressive production, it prevents me from actually getting into it.

**Two Stars**

12. “Make Her Say”

You get a massive lift with this one, a track that I didn’t expect to see on the album as you see that you get the track that originally went by the name of “I Poke Her Face” as it samples Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” and has Kanye bringing some conventional Hip Hop beats as well as rapping with him and Common. It is a killer, although it doesn’t seem to fit in here at all. The guests simply kill it off.

**Five Stars**

13. “Pursuit Of Happiness”

Coming off such a killer tune, you see that he moves on into one of the other singles form the album and it is one of the tunes that I really had no love for at all as he gets into his full-on alternative ways to the point where I can’t see where I can possible get anything out of it. The intensions of the track are obvious, but I don’t think he had to do it all in such a way where it escapes what all others are doing (and can understand).

**One Star**

14. “Hyyerr”

You see that in this one you get a bit more general Hip Hop work as here he does a track that sounds quite regular for a Mid-West joint and I expect that much of the influence to do such a tune is in order to make his guest, Chip Tha Ripper (another out of his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio) and together they make for a pretty fly, laid-back tune that recovers from the generally wackness on this release.

**Four Stars**

15. “Up Up & Away”

He brings the album to a close with a track that sounds quite typical of his kind of work. You find that in it he goes by his regular ways, but changes it just slightly with a much lighter set made to be up-tempo so that he gives things a bit of life as the record ends. It does very little to help things out and for me kept it at the level I had expected and seems to represent what had come in the album reasonably well.

**One Star**

I expect this to be a simple sequel to what Kanye had brought on “808s & Heartbreak”, and apart from the odd time when the producer means that we escape the dullness of the release, this is all it basically is (without the auto-tuning and more of the rapping). This kind of Alternative Hip Hop doesn’t appeal to me, and those who only know him for the Crookers remix to “Day ‘n’ Nite” shouldn’t see that as a representation of his work by any means.
 

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