Man On The Moon III: The Chosen

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“Every time I make a record, I'm learning something new about myself,” Kid Cudi tells Apple Music. “I didn't realize that my father's death really had an impact on me in the way that it did until I started writing about it: 'Oh, I guess being alone is an issue for me. I guess being depressed is an issue.' I'm just making music, I'm just doing what feels right, but this shit is coming out and it's things that I probably didn't pinpoint [in the moment].” The issues Cudi mentions have been emerging for him since his beginnings as the “lonely stoner,” a New York City-via-Cleveland cool kid who assured a generation of rappers to follow him that it was plenty OK to acknowledge your own inexplicable melancholy. <i>Man on the Moon III: The Chosen</i>, which returns to a naming convention Cudi hadn’t utilized since 2010’s <i>Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager</i> (with four solo and two collaborative albums in between), finds him in a sort of post-discovery nirvana, coming clean about his mental-health journey (“Mr Solo Dolo III”), his relationship with his mother (“Elsie’s Baby Boy [flashback]”), and the power of his celebrity (“4 Da Kidz”). “I was already in a really good place working on <i>Entergalactic</i> [his forthcoming animated series and soundtrack], going crazy on ‘THE SCOTTS’—but then I was making something else that didn't fit those two project. After two or three song, I was like, 'Whoa, this shit really feels like a <i>Man on the Moon</i>. It sounds like you pick right back up where we left off 10 years ago.'” .

via Apple Music

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