Kid Cudi - Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager

Kid Cudi’s much-anticipated second album casts him as a vulnerable loner, struggling with newfound fame and his own persistent neuroses. Sound familiar? It should. Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager purports to be a sequel to Cudi’s debut Man on the Moon: The End of Day, but in reality it’s more like a retake.

In fact, it’s difficult to evaluate MOTMII outside the context of its predecessor— though in a vacuum, the Cleveland rapper’s second effort would probably garner a reception remarkably similar to the first. Cudi still favors spacey, electro-minimalist beats. The half-baked autobiography concept returns basically unchanged. Cudi has wisely done away with Common’s laughably contrived voice-over narration, but other faux-cinematic impulses, like the “Mr. Rager” alter ego, are more than a little reminiscent of his first album.

As before, the production—again courtesy of Emile and Plain Pat, with assists from No I.D. and others—is the album’s strongest suit and Cudi’s most distinguishing characteristic. This second batch of songs sees Cudi consolidating the influences that made his debut, if not critically acclaimed, at least blogworthy. He samples St. Vincent at one point and Choir of Young Believers at another, which would seem like a blatant play for indie credibility but for the ingenious execution. Collaborators like Ratatat, designed to highlight Cudi’s rockist tendencies on MOTM, are absent, but not conspicuously so—Cudi has internalized trip-hop guitar melodies into his own repertoire anyway. More so than its predecessor, preoccupied as it was with making really big pop songs, MOTMII succeeds in creating its own sonic atmosphere, full of foreboding electronic flourishes and dark, propulsive 808s. Although Kanye rightfully gets most of the credit for the proliferation of emotive, self-conscious rap music, Cudi has been just as influential in shaping exactly how it sounds.

And yet, the album only sporadically works on more than a superficial level. For one, Cudi sometimes falls victim to his own genre-bending; while he’s clearly partial to his flat, affect-less singing voice, he’s much wittier and more compelling when actually rapping. For another, despite his considerable personal popularity, Cudi remains steadfastly awkward and uncharismatic on record. It’s not just the frequency of absolute clunkers (“I love the darkness/I’d like to marry it”) or the limited vocabulary. It’s his redundant and often sullen self-pity; the “people don’t understand me” ethos is easier to sympathize with when not used so relentlessly. Indeed, Cudi’s at his best during his brief forays into humor (“Cudders/HBO, that Vitamin Water/That’s money to blow/Cause your money for blow”), which go a long way towards humanizing his otherwise pretty miserable persona.

Of course, one could have written a similar paragraph about MOTM. As on his debut, Cudi’s attempt at constructing an album-length narrative falls flat, in part because the plot never materializes. Our hero was sad at the beginning, is sad at the end and picked up a coke habit in between. The truth is that not much has changed in Cudi’s world.