Released June 8, 2018
9 / 10
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Feel the Love, Reborn, Kids See Ghosts, Cudi Montage
Few songs emulate the highs and lows of mental health as well as Kanye and Cudi’s ‘Feel The Love’. The exquisite opener of their 2018 joint venture under the moniker KIDS SEE GHOSTS kicks off the third of the ‘Wyoming Sessions’’s outputs where references to depression, down- and uphill battles, slayed demons and inner foes abound. The album’s little brother, ‘Ye’, was already brooding, somber and directly addressed Kanye’s mental health challenges past and future - to which the twitter-verse regularly has front-row seats to the dismay of mental health experts and those who truly care about Kanye. Yet ‘KIDS SEE GHOSTS’ is more grand, combining elements of rock, psychedelia and hip hop to test genre boundaries and rebuild from the broken. It’s undeniably one of the most important records from both of its main creators who manage to summon their ghosts and soothe them before our very ears.
‘KIDS SEE GHOSTS’ is a world in itself, breathing life into Takashi Murakami’s breathtaking cover art with sizzling electronics and blurry edges that create a fully-formed animated experience. The fantastical microcosm really draws nearer with ‘Fire’. Cudi and Kanye bask in the glory of naysayers, along ritualistic humming and a marching beat pattern fit for a Western remake of The Wizard of Oz. The music sinuously expands like liquid nitrogen on a stage, embalmed in an air of mystery with the help of a flute until it floods our senses with visual cues from sound effects and the illusion of movement propelled by the percussions. ‘4th Dimension’ continues the journey in the psychedelia machine through a beautiful dark and twisted fantasy audibly inspired by Kanye’s much-celebrated 2010 sonic exorcism. The eerie Louis Prima sample and the laughter interlude blow on the low-lying fog to disperse it temporarily, just in time for us to hear some of Kanye’s best lines on the album. Playing directly with lyrics through their delivery has long been one of his strength and here it is best displayed by the line “If I get locked up, I won’t finish the sent-“, an adept play on meaning and theatrics. The ambiance of ‘Freeee’, the sequel to ‘Ye’’s ‘Ghost Town’ also feels like heard from the outside, looking above this mystical realm where a seasoned Dorothy and her companions march towards the unknown, having overcome enemies both in and out. The journey’s goals are fuzzy but they keep on marching, particularly on the title track, where hollow percussions tick forward, unrelenting on their promise of growing light at the end of the tunnel.
There’s marked progress throughout ‘KIDS SEE GHOSTS’ as it cultivates a sense of being freshly awake, along with the naive disorientation and blur that come with raising from deep slumber. The feeling is most explicit on the incredible ‘Reborn’, where both artists come up with simple but important realizations. Cudi’s repentance comes from a more introspective place, as he acknowledges his role in past weakness and in repairing them to move forward (“Peace is something’ that starts with me” is definitely something that bears repeating). Kanye’s grievances, by contrast, are more targeted to his handling of the outside’s perception of himself - and by proxy to those he deems responsible for his past ‘shame’, ‘pain’ and ‘blame’. His verse proves to be one of his most hard-hitting ever in my opinion. The track manages to sound heavy and hopeful at the same time as we travel through a hazy part of the dreamland. ‘Reborn’ is the blindfold coming off, leaving you temporarily blinded while adjusting to light and fumbling to recognize your surroundings. It’s new, full of possibilities, exciting and scary - as are most things worth trying in life. As Cudi and Kanye start seeing the world through a more forgiving lens, they recall the magic of youth and innocence that allows you to see clearly beyond the limits of reality. Helped by Mos Def (credited under his real name) on ‘Kids See Ghosts’ they dream up a world where co-jointed notions exist separately from each other, shaking off constructs and concepts millennia in the making.
If the nature of the work falls on the hopeful side, it has a lot to do with the shift in how they choose to handle pain. Cudi and Kanye preach trusting yourself and divine powers to face it head on instead of seeking distractions (drugs, pleasure, wealth) in place of a numbing cream. ‘Feel the Love’ embraces love in the midst of turbulence as a means to stay afloat and not give in to the pervasive voices that continuously find their way back to the psyche. The track suggests both (love and turbulence) can co-exist as long as the former keeps the latter in check, by exiting with the coincidence of Kanye’s chaotic vocals and Cudi’s “I can still feel the love” chants. The ultimate ‘throwing hands in the air and seeking guidance from above’ moment comes with the final cut, ‘Cudi Montage’. A feat of emotional inflections, the gorgeous closer is the only track that spends considerable time on a shared experience of cyclic violence the systems in place make it extremely hard to get out of - as they thrive on the policing and imprisonment of populations deemed unimportant and voiceless. Two years later, we’ve heard a couple of recent collaborations on Cudi's side (Eminem, Travis Scott) and Kanye is threatening to release ‘Donda’ every other week. Ye’s inner battles appear to have become public commodities and many of the demons slayed for ‘KIDS SEE GHOSTS’ are back in swarms. Here’s to hoping Kanye finds the strength to overcome all before we hear new music - there’ll be plenty to discuss later but now is the time to heal.
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