It was the start of the school year. Life’s joy was reduced to furtive meetings behind the local chapel after school. There a knowing congregation hung, lining Blockias one to one, infrared beaming new albums to one another. Nobody knew who brought the tunes, where or how the music arrived, or by which block; it was as if one of us had divined each new release into being. So, every new album entailed this shamanic ritual. Orderly queues were formed. Phones unfurled from secret pouches and pencil cases. It operated on the DL for an entire school year, with Kanye’s Graduation dropping at the stub-end of the Summer ‘08’. Kanye’s College-Dropout trilogy was gospel to us. Pre-Kardashian Kanye was a role-model that vouched for our everyday fight, each record rooted in anti-establishment and rightfully indignant sentiments. When Kanye later ordained himself a god, we simply nodded; he transcended the grind of broken schools and dead-end jobs, leaving a hymn behind for the rest of us. There was no question as to whether ‘Ye had earned his place in the Hiphop pantheon. So, when Graduation dropped, it was hot; so much that our ritual was caught and shut down within the week. We never met behind the church again.   

Cudi, on the other hand, we infrareded mostly for the smugness of being on to a Kanye Protégé before the mob. But the mob never took to Cudi; and as we grew older, Cudi was set-aside, callously mistaken for little more than ‘Ye’s collaborator; eating from the hand of God, a sort of human theremin. Whereas Kanye gave us notions that struggle could at least be immortalised in art, Cudi’s sombre droning simply reified the fight.   

It’s been a cruel season now, as the disparate strands of Kanye’s signees and collaborators queue to release albums with either Yeezy on beats or heading the project, all via his ‘G.O.O.D Music’ label. Three weeks deep and we have Pusha T’s brilliant Daytona, the barely reheated leftovers that comprise Kanye’s eighth album Ye, and now (and I am unequivocal in saying this) we have the best of the bunch thus far, a collaborative album by Cudi and Ye, entitled Kids See Ghosts. The project doubles as the finest Ye project since Yeezus and the definitive album of Kid Cudi’s catalogue.

Kids See Ghosts not only provides a blissful trip into psychedelic rock-hop, but it also redeems both its protagonists, whose calamitous personal lives have threatened to overshadow their music in recent years (which itself is a testament to the music’s dwindling quality, especially in Cudi’s case). Cudi is far from instrumental to Kanye’s genius on this record. In fact, the record’s opening track is dominated by Cudi’s soulful and titular cry “I can still feel the love”. Presumably this, and a number of his lyrics throughout are aimed at his detractors who heavily (and often rightly) panned his art as he sank into a state of extreme depression. Kids See Ghosts, though, offers more than hope for Cudi. It delivers to us a newly invigorated artist, whose vocals are stirring throughout.

Kanye, too, seems twice the man he was, if only a week ago; thankfully exhausted with the media storm, which was inflamed in anticipation of these releases. His trap inspired manic ad-libs on Feel the Love compliment Pusha T’s short, pugnacious verse perfectly: “We not worried ’bout no other n***as, we them other n***as” Pusha warns critics; and there truly is no need to worry.

4th Dimension as an ode to great sex is Yeezy at his finest. Kanye hasn’t sounded this comfortably hedonistic and belligerent since 2013’s Yeezus. In 4th Dimension,   a chopped up sample of Louis Prima’s What will Santa Claus Say couches Kanye’s thoughts on “getting lost” in his women (ahem), trans-dimensional interventions and how the imprisoned rich never seem to finish their damn “senten….”. Easily one of the most thrilling beats on the album, the sampling style is reminiscent of a Yeezy yonder. It has that RZA-style, a certain haunting quality, a dusty sample, though set atop those clear, incredibly futuristic drums and synths that have set Kanye’s production apart from his peers constantly. Clearly both Cudi and Ye agree on this point, after all, “this the theme song”, even if it is mostly about dispassionate sex!

Ghost Town, Pt. 2 continues Kanye’s near nihilistic musings on freedom, with a Marcus Garvey sample to set the tone. “When man becomes possessor of the knowledge of himself, he becomes the master of his environment”, Kanye and Cudi take turns demonstrating their own mastery of form. It’s also worth highlighting the heavenly performance from Ty Dolla $ign on this cut, which must again be contrasted with his ridiculous, even embarrassing performance on Ye.

The production on these songs is illuminated by Cudi’s love for grunge. Kanye is clearly dominating on beats, with the majority of the tracks sitting comfortably beside those of Daytona, but the palate is all Cudi. The one exception seems to be the Cudi-produced Reborn, which notably boasts two fractured verses from broken men about pain, addiction and the prospect of recovery!  

The titular Kids See Ghosts boasts a hook from one of rap’s own lost spirits, Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) whose spoken word verse on this is both haunting and abstract. It merely whets one’s appetite for that final album Bey’s been promising now for a while. There’s a nice humorous juxtaposition between Cudi and Ye’s verses, which are both heavy handed in their notions of redemption through Christ. Whereas Cudi is devout, “Sittin’ by myself, findin’ heaven soon”, Ye is “very Christian/ Constantly repentin’, ’cause, yes, [he] never listen”. The beat is menacing and the bars are ill; by far my favourite cut on the album!

Finally, there’s the Cudi Montage which gives us the best Ye verse within this album cycle, charting the perpetual loss that’s maintains in using “pieces” to protect ones’ peace. These are definitely his most powerful and concious set of bars in years. “Just another cycle of the lonely / all growin’ up in environment / where doin’ crime the requirement / they send us off to prison for retirement” all spit over a forlorn guitar, sampled from a recently unearthed trove of Kurt Cobain’s personal recordings. The last words are, as is only befitting, Cudi’s; he pleads with himself, and presumably Ye, to “stay strong”.

Kanye’s music has always been something sacred to me, and when it’s this good, I feel like the child I once was, trying to line my phone against other kids’ on the tarmac. Kids See Ghosts gives me that same feeling. I want to show my friends, to exchange it, to gift it. I never suspected that this kind of excellence could belong in part to Kid Cudi. I’m glad to have my expectations dashed, though, and look forward to his future output. The only low on this minor opus is the boring Fire; whose demo quality makes it feel like filler when set against the other six tracks. In short, I’m really digging this album, and willing for forgive the mistakes and musical shortcomings of Ye, that if anything, showed how lonely it gets at the top. But as long as Ye stays strong, the love and anticipation remains for the final two releases of this season!