NOTEWRTHY: Review of Kid Cudi’s Entergalactic

Welcome back to Notewrthy, the best Saturday morning music blog in UIC (according to an internal poll of 1 vote).

Today, I’m going to talk about the new set of projects released by one of the few cool people to come out of Ohio, Kid Cudi.

Last week, on September 30th, 2022, Kid Cudi released two new projects, both titled Entergalactic. The projects consisted of a 45 minute long, 15 song album released on most popular streaming services, and a ~1.5 hour long animated movie/TV special released on Netflix. We’re going to be talking about these in the order Cudi suggested to view/listen to them: Show first, then the album.

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE SHOW

The story takes place in New York City and follows a street artist named Jabari, played by Kid Cudi himself, who moves into a new apartment after getting a job with a comic book company to turn his character, Mr. Rager, into a comic book. When he moves into the apartment, he runs into his neighbor, a photographer named Meadow, played by Jessica Williams. After a party Meadow is hosting one night keeps Jabari up, he goes over to talk to her and the two go out to lunch as a way for Meadow to make it up to him. They end up hitting it off and eventually start to see more of each other. There is, of course, trouble with Jabari’s ex, Carmen, who shows up in the beginning of the show and ends up getting Jabari into trouble with Meadow, causing a rift between them. However, the two eventually make up and continue to see each other after Meadow’s big photography exhibit in a local museum.

While the plot itself is decently predictable, I still found it very enjoyable. Not every show has to be groundbreaking or subvert expectations plot wise, sometimes it just has to be simple— something easy to pick up and relax to. Plus, the cast was surprisingly star-studded, featuring actors like Timothee Chalamet, Macaulay Culkin and Vanessa Hudgens, along side other musicians like 070 Shake and Ty Dolla $ign. The show, overall, was something you could tell a lot of time and effort was put into. The stylistic and extremely colorful animation bears many similarities to Sony’s 2018 animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which, despite the sometimes choppy or gritty feel to it, really brings something special to the overall tone and feel of the show. Also, as a tribute to his friend, the late founder of Off-White, Virgil Abloh, many off the characters’ outfits in the show, as well as many background details, feature some of his iconic designs. The show also references other designers/brands, such as with Kaws and the statues Jabari carries into his apartment in the first scene of the show. Finally, the musical selection for the show was also really well inserted, giving it a very cohesive flow and sentiment.

All in all, I’d give the show a high 8 to a light 9 out of 10 because while I enjoyed the majority of it, it wasn’t perfect.

But now that we’ve talked about the show, let’s talk about the album, which just so happened to be most of the music in said show.

Before the release, Kid Cudi made it clear on Twitter that this album wasn’t simply a soundtrack for the show, and that it was first and foremost a Kid Cudi album. While the album was used for many of the musical pieces featured in the show, it didn’t feel like it was made specifically as a soundtrack. The album features some higher energy songs such as “Do What I Want,” but mostly is composed of very lowkey and relaxed songs such as “Willing To Trust” and “Angel.” While some found the “sleepy” vibe of this album to be a bit of a turn-off, I thought it worked out well. Cudi is most well known for his thoughtful, slower, and introspective music, and to expect him to make stuff super far out of his comfort zone is a bit of an unrealistic expectation. At its core, this album truly is a Kid Cudi project, for better or worse.

After watching the show then listening to the album, I see why he wanted the viewers to consume these projects in that order. Being able to visualize the part of the show that featured each song as I listened to it on the album brought another level to the overall experience, which I very much appreciate. The use of heavy and drawn out, almost string-instrument-like synths really helped give the album Cudi’s signature “vibe heavy” touch, which is always a great listen. However, this album also did have a few drawbacks. While it might be due to needing more time and more listens with the album, the features felt underwhelming and almost out of place, especially 2 Chainz’s verse. Also, while I did enjoy the overall relaxed feel, it did get to be a bit much at times.

In the end, this is nowhere near Cudi’s best release, but I still found it to be highly enjoyable. Definitely worth a listen if you haven’t heard it already, so I’m going to give this a low 8 on a 10 point scale.

Entergalactic as a whole is two good halves of an overall really good project. Both can be enjoyed with, or without, the other, and I think that makes it really something worth the time to experience.