It’s a slow, atmospheric float through a dark, gloomy cloud of almost horror-like experimentation.
The third track, “Releaser” stands out as one of Cudi’s best tracks ever. It sounds like a potential B-side from 2014’s Satellite Flight, which is a plus, seeing as that’s one of Cudi’s best records, if not his absolute best. The synth instrumental sounds like something you’d hear from the band College, or even late-era Genesis, and coupled with the autotuned vocals, it becomes a very outer space-like track. This isn’t a case of simply using it for pitch correction or to hide a lack of vocal ability – he makes it part of the soundscape of the song. “Swim In The Light” is an excellent surprising synth-driven melody that contains one thing I don’t think we’ve ever heard on a Kid Cudi song: autotune. The beat and the rhythm are pretty old school, and he’s rapping traditionally more than he has in a number of years. “Frequency”, the first track (and the first single), is the closest he comes to “classic Cudi” as many often say. They all flow into each other effortlessly and together, they’d make a great EP. On my first listen, by the time I got to “All In”, I was convinced this was going to be one of Cudi’s best albums. “Frequency”, “Swim In The Light”, “Releaser”, “By Design”, and “All In” collectively make-up some of Cudi’s best work in a while. The first 5 tracks on this album are all bangers. I think it will be best to break this album down into specific sections, because it seems that the individual song quality wavers depending on how far you are into the track list. The album runs 86 minutes with 19 tracks, and unfortunately only about 8 of them are great. With each new Cudi album it becomes more and more expected that it will be an uneven, grab bag and Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’ is no different. 2015’s notorious Speeding Bullet 2 Heaven, though, featured some of his weirdest, and hardest to listen to experiments yet.
#BEST KID CUDI ALBUMS FULL#
Kid Cudi has seemingly tried it all, from full out alternative rock albums with WZRD to weird, spacey mostly instrumental concept albums like Satellite Flight.
Over the years he has shown that he has no problem alienating his fan base with countless experimental shifts in his music. At this point in his career, Kid Cudi has nothing to prove to anyone.