This is the 8th full-length album from Cleveland rapper, singer, songwriter, producer & actor KiD CuDi. Blowing up in 2008 off his debut mixtape A KiD Named CuDi as well as his songwriting credits on his former mentor Kanye West’s 4th album 808s & Heartbreak, his profile from there would increasingly grow off his groundbreaking debut & sophomore albums Man on the Moon: The End of the Day & Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager. But following the self-produced & overlooked Indicud, CuDi would leave G.O.O.D. Music amicably to form his own Republic Records imprint Wicked Awesome Records. Satellite Flight: The Journey to Mother Moon though was mediocre at best & who could forget when CuDi attempted to go alt-rock on the critically panned Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven? Luckily he would redeem himself on his next effort Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’ in 2016 along with the self-titled album from him & Ye as the duo KIDS SEE GHOSTS couple summers later & even Man on the Moon III: The Chosen the day after my 24th birthday despite it’s blatantly heavy Travis Scott influence. At the beginning of 2022 though, Kanye announced that CuDi wouldn’t be on the unfinished DONDA 2 due to the latter’s friendship with Skete because he was dating Ye’s hobbit ex-wife at the time & ultimately resulted in a falling out between the mentor/protege duo that always brought the best out of one another. Even this past summer when he stormed off stage at Rolling Loud because ignorant hecklers were throwing shit at him while performing & now Mike Dean announcing on Twitter that CuDi booted him off the inaugural Moon Man’s Landing festival that just went down earlier this month due to his longstanding ties as Kanye’s engineer. But with the success of Moon Man’s Landing & now Entergalactic premiering on Netflix today, CuDi’s also giving us a soundtrack to coincide with it.

After the “Entergalactic Theme” intro, the first song “New Mode” kicks off the album with a wavy instrumental from WZRD telling the world that he’s at the next level in his life whereas “Do What I Want” was a great choice for a lead single with it’s poppy trap instrumental from Take a Daytrip & CuDi talking about doing his fucking thing. “Angelic” takes a more melodic approach with it’s dreamy production & heavy auto-tuned vocals asking where this woman in his life came from, but then “Ignite the Love” goes full blown acoustic with the help of Skrillex to sing about thanking God for finding her.

Meanwhile on “In Love”, we have CuDi pulling from electropop á la 808s & Heartbreak expanding on the themes of love just before Ty$ tags along for the neo-psychedelic alternative R&B duet “Willing to Trust” featuring co-production from E*vax singing about how this is the day that he’s been waiting for. 2 Chainz comes into the picture for the boastful trap banger “Can’t Believe It” that Plain Pat whipped up with WZRD talking about how they be coastin’, but then “Livin’ My Truth” is a groovy hip hop banger admitting that it’s all he knows.

“Maybe So” has a theatrically downtrodden tone to it from the beat to CuDi’s dejecting confessions of missing his significant other while “Can’t Shake Her” is a Man on the Moon: The End of Day throwback sonically detailing the dreams he’s having about her. “She’s Looking for Me” somberly asks if she can save the night in time while the song “My Drug” melodically tells her to take his heart over some atmospheric yet symphonic instrumentation.

The penultimate track “Somewhere to Fly” with Don Toliver finds the 2 telling their lovers to follow them if they ever want to go overseas by their sides from their catchy performances to the aquatic vibes of the beat from WondaGurl until the bonus cut “Burrow” ends the album with CuDi & Don reuniting over Steve Aoki’s signature electro house style of production talking about how getting stronger & faster feels like. If the last 2 joints here are teasers towards a potential collab effort from both these guys, then I wouldn’t be opposed to it.

As wrong as I think Ye is for making the announcement that CuDi wasn’t gonna be on DONDA 2 considering that he talked to Ye about it weeks prior & making a joke out it the Rolling Loud incident, I’d also say CuDi acted incredibly childish by kicking Mike Dean off the Moon Man’s Landing lineup over his ties as his former mentor’s longtime engineer resulting in the album leaking a little bit ago with fart sounds & people speculating Mike was involved with it. That being said, I’m still a fan of all 3 of them at the end of the day & this is a solid soundtrack to his Netflix special. As far as sound goes, he throws it back to the early days of his career & the cohesive concept of it is pretty well told.

Score: 3.5/5

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