We wondered if we were even looking at the final version of the album or whether this was a chaotically in-process document, West fixing each of the seven songs in real time.Īs it turns out, though, that may have been the perfect way to begin hearing Kids See Ghosts. But this past Friday, Kids See Ghosts, West’s new collaborative album with Kid Cudi, came out slowly, appearing gradually on one streaming platform after another, its songs mislabeled.
For a long time, that’s how Kanye West did it, stoking attention expertly, executing one masterful PR stunt after another. Those of us in the music press have gotten used to album rollouts that proceed with metronomic precision. And Kanye West rolls out new albums, week after week, in ways that leave our collective head spinning. In the days ahead, there is a real possibility that Dennis Rodman could emerge as a key figure in international diplomacy. In the final seconds of an NBA Finals game, JR Smith forgets the score and goes tearing the wrong way up the court.
A Star Wars movie comes out and lands with a splat. The President of the United States throws reckless words at Canada. We’re only a week and a half out from Memorial Day, but the news, from every corner of the culture, is messy, disorienting, unstable. This, though, is the sound of two artists looking back over the vast distance they’ve travelled so far.There is nothing surgical about this summer. On ‘Reborn’ – which rides a brilliant, brittle, staccato beat – the duo instructs us to “ keep moving forward”. It sounds, suitably, ghostly and supernatural – a brief glimpse into another world. The message is clear: it’s okay to not feel okay.Ī seven-track album (it’s Kanye’s current obsession both ‘ye’ and ‘Daytona’ ran to the same length) can hardly help but feel slight, though the brevity actually suits this collaborative record. Here it sounds defiant: “Guess what, baby? I feel freeee!” Elsewhere on the album, lyrics allude to “ pain” and being “ lost”. On the original, emo rapper 070 Shake belts out the line “And nothing hurts any more / I feel kind of free” in the manner of a vintage soul singer there is jubilant release. Another stand-out forms the chorus of ‘Freee (Ghost Town Pt.2’), which recycles a moment from the ‘ye’ track ‘Ghost Town’. There’s a call-and-response between the lyrics “ Lord shine your light on me” and backing vocals that implore, “ Stay strong”, while a calming wash of synth ebbs away in the background. The stand-out moment of ‘Kids See Ghosts’ occurs just past the mid-way point of the finale track, ‘Cudi Montage’. They have helped to shape a world in which rappers can lay bare their vulnerabilities and address issues such as mental health – a world that gave us Vic Mensa’s 2017 debut and saw Jay-Z return with ‘4.44’, a bald mea culpa that wilfully exposed his fragile masculinity – and here they unite to issue an almost uniquely meditative, self-accepting album. This is the sound of Kanye and Cudi catching up with themselves. It’s characterised by the ethereal, low-key beats and off-kilter, barely in-tune singing that have been Cudi’s trademark since his emotional 2008 mixtape ‘A Kid Named Cudi’ influenced Kanye’s introspective and ice-cold ‘808s & Heartbreak’, which in turn influenced the likes of Drake and The Weeknd. The former artist will take the lion’s share of the headlines around the project, given that it’s the third release he’s been deeply involved with this month – there was, of course, Kanye’s solo record, ‘ye’, and the Pusha T album ‘Daytona’, which he produced – but, actually, this is Cudi’s album through and through. There is a calmness to the debut album from Kids Sees Ghosts, the new collaboration between Kanye West and Cleveland, Ohio, rapper Kid Cudi.