Kid Cudi is so busy right now he’d make mid-2000s Future look like Frank Ocean. Just weeks after the release of his ninth album INSANO, he’s followed it up with what he’s calling a “continuation” of the project entitled INSANO (NITRO MEGA).
More than just a bonus edition with a few extra tracks, NITRO MEGA is a mammoth 18 tracks long and as much as anything, an indication of what the decidedly uneven original album could have been.
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NITRO MEGA is less chasing the trap bounce of close collaborator Travis Scott and more Cudi on the home territory that combines his somber voice to futuristic sonics that pull from a vast wall of influence.
Pusha T collaboration “EVERYBODY LIKE” which combines a raging distorted guitar with a boom bap beat is exactly the kind of experimental trippiness from which Cudi established an army of stoner fans while still being respected in Hip Hop circles.
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“All My Life” is the closest throwback to the Cudder fans fell in love with in the late 2000s. He eschews rapping in favor of singing on the heartfelt track which contains Cudi’s classic themes of loneliness and existentialism. Alongside his trademark harmonizing, Cudi’s singing of: “See the picture? It’s framed to smile/ Something happened, that’s what’s gone/ To you baby/ I said my love,” is the most meaningful thing he’s said in a while.
However, not every creative choice on the album is successful: “WILLIS” is drugged out to the extreme and appears to reject all notions of what a song actually is. It’s an interlude that drags painfully over four minutes and is his biggest misstep since Speedin Bullet 2 Heaven.
Meanwhile, “ELECTROWAVE BABY 2.0,” which has Steve Aoki on production, is a background song in a Fast and Furious movie waiting to happen, with Cudi unable to feel comfortable on its generic dance beat. It’s an experimentation that should have been recognized for the failure it is.
The album, which again, is extortionately long, surges positively on the final stretch and ends on a high point with the dramatic “Superboy” which captures the ethereal qualities of Cudi’s earlier work, even if it does lack the thematic and lyrical depth of something like “GHOST!” from Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager.
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When looking at the two projects — all 39 tracks — it’s hard not to think that better discipline would have put together one album that was better and more cohesive than the two that were released. While INSANO found Cudi in a more openly celebratory mode, NITRO MEGA has more worthy moments of introspection but is also weighed down with leftovers that were deemed not good enough for the first release.
RELEASE DATE: February 23, 2024
RECORD LABEL: Republic/UMG
Listen to INSANO (NITRO MEGA) below:
