They’re not even platinum! Man on the Moon 1 is like 860,000 sold. It’d be different if the first two were platinum. 'As of right now, people should just get that off their mind. 'And I don’t even feel obligated to do Man on the Moon 3 anymore,' he said in an interview with Billboard back in 2016. His music might still be relatable, but it has never sounded so cliché.The news of the third installment of Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon album series likely comes as a surprise to his fans as Cudi said four years ago that he didn't feel compelled to drop a third offering, which would make MOTM a trilogy. Kid Cudi’s ability to be an avatar for people’s struggles with mental illness has always been central to his appeal. This tidy arc, which moves from dark to light and resolves easily, coupled with the pompous title and division of the album into several acts (in accordance with MOTM custom) gives Man on the Moon III: The Chosen the faux-epic scope of an Avengers movie. By the end, Cudi has renewed his lease on life “shit is gravy,” he concludes on the finale “Lord I Know.” Rager.” Over the course of the second half of The Chosen, the production palette lightens and hedges closer to the blend of indie rock, synth-pop, and hip hop that defined the first two MOTM albums.

The narrative premise Man on the Moon III: The Chosen is more half-baked according to the album’s jacket copy, “in one night, must face himself again and fight to win back his soul from the evil Mr. Waluigi is the true nowhere man, without the other characters he reflects, inverts, and parodies he has no reason to exist.” “Show Out” is music, not a fictional Italian scoundrel, which means that its existence is not simply relative, but offensive.Ģ010’s Man on the Moon II successfully developed the themes of its predecessor - hedonism, fame, and depression collide - resulting in the creation of Cudi’s destructive alter-ego Mr. The mind-boggling degrees of bastardization, which begin with Cudi’s own influence on Scott, recall “I, We, Waluigi: A Post-Modern Analysis of Waluigi” : “You invert Mario to create Wario - Mario turned septic and libertarian - then you reflect the inversion in the reflection: you create a being who can only exist in reference to others. The worst song on The Chosen is “Show Out” (featuring Pop Smoke and Skepta), which attempts to graft Scott’s style onto contemporary drill a la “GATTI,” except with a knock-off 808Melo beat.

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