It makes you think things could get better if Cudi manages to cheer up in the future (and why not? Man on the Moon is the rare record in 2009 that's beating sales expectations), but then we might just end up with more songs like 'Enter Galactic' and 'Make Her Say', the 'Poker Face' remake where Cudi, 'Ye, and Common play misogynistically against type for laughs and somehow make you feel bad for Lady Gaga. Cruelest of all, the album goes a long ways towards redeeming itself with its final two tracks- 'Hyyerrr' nods to the haziest productions from DJ U-Neek while 'Up Up & Away' unabashedly makes its alt-rock intentions known with jarringly optimistic acoustic guitars. Solo Dolo' nods to the warped Orientalism from Silent Shout's quieter tracks and you almost wish the tangible warmth emanating from the strings on 'In My Dreams' would reveal itself in something other than a somnambulant intro. He's also got a really keen ear for sounds: 'Mr. His hooks have a way of burrowing into your brain- you already know the deal with 'Day 'N' Nite', and 'Simple As.' bears a strange resemblance to 'Semi-Charmed Life' but damn if I'll be able to forget it any time soon. As far as rap metaphors go, Cudi is Katrina with no FEMA: 'I live in a cocoon/ Opposite of Cancun/ Where it is never sunny/ Dark side of the moon,' or, even more pointedly, 'Gray clouds up above, man/ Metaphor to my life, man.'Д«ut what's most frustrating of all is that Cudi can make Man on the Moon feel like a missed opportunity instead of a non-starter. 'Look at me/ You tell me just what you see/ Am I someone whom you may love/ Or enemy,' goes a particularly Brandon Flowers-like line of the otherwise effectively spare 'Mr. He's referred to as 'our hero' throughout Man on the Moon, and his superpower is managing to convey unlimited amounts of :-( while staying firmly in his vocab-stunted 'sorrow'-'tomorrow'/ 'room'-'moon' wheelhouse of rhymes.

It would be numbing enough on its own, but nearly every 30 seconds there's some terrifyingly underwritten lyric to jolt you into sharp pangs of embarrassment. Throughout, Cudi's issues could not be rendered in a more clumsy or obvious way, blowing up every slight perceived or real ('had mad jobs and I lost damn near all of them') into trials of such mythical proportions that it needs a bogus four-part 'plot' (Cudi is sad, does mushrooms, starts to get famous, is still sad) and narration from Common.Д¬udi also slathers his verses with a flat warble that Auto-Tune was made to salvage. 'I got some issues that nobody can see,' goes the hook to 'Soundtrack 2 My Life', and it's a boast as grandiose as you're likely to hear in 2009. The problem is how these two impulses feed off each other in all the wrong ways, with Cudi inverting the songwriting process so that a supposed pursuit of honesty is rendered predatory and manipulative. And we won't play the hipster card, since this record lives and dies by its lyrics as much as any document of spit-these-bars formalism. Now, I still check for Atmosphere projects and I've got a functioning knowledge of the Get Up Kids' discography, so I can't knock Man on the Moon for skewing emo. But whereas 808s was a record about a very public figure attempting a retreat he'd be incapable of sustaining, Man on the Moon uses quotidian, lonely stoner turmoil as a means of introduction. Cudi co-wrote several tracks on 808s (most notably guesting on 'Welcome to Heartbreak'), and combined with hits in Drake's 'Best I Ever Had' and Cudi's own 'Day 'N' Nite', the commercial resiliency of that album proved that fad or not, this sadsack backpack stuff is here to stay.

Kid cudi album review man on the moon