Perfectly at Peace

A Black Kid’s Ode to Kid Cudi

Happy to see how far I’ve come
To the same place it began
My dreams and imagination
Perfectly at peace
So I move along a bit higher

– Up Up & Away, Kid Cudi

In July 2016, I pulled up to the Divide Music Festival in Winter Park, Colorado, having woken up early to make the little-over-an-hour trip from Denver with minimal caffeine—only a promise that I’d get to see one of my heroes perform that night: Scott Mescudi, the Cleveland, Ohio native most notably known as Kid Cudi.

Leading up to that sunny day in Winter Park, admittedly, I had not given much mind to Kid Cudi’s past two album releases at that point: Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven (2015) & SATELLITE FLIGHT: The journey to Mother Moon (2014). Cudi, who has gone on the record as saying he wanted each of his albums to have a different sound, had seemingly taken a significant left from his first two Man On The Moon projects & his 2013 album Indicud.

Hearing Cudi’s debut album, Man On The Moon: The End Of Day, for the first time, I didn’t like it. Months passed before I decided to give it another try—and then it was months before I could bring myself to listen to anything else.