'That's what 'Kids See Ghosts' was: to update the world on where I'm at,' the rapper speaks of his new album, in which he collaborates with West.
- July 20, 2018
AceShowbiz - Comeback king Kid Cudi jumped at the chance to work with his one-time rival Kanye West on new album Kids See Ghosts because it was an opportunity for him to update fans on his life.
The rapper, real name Scott Mescudi, stepped back from the spotlight in late 2016 - after detailing his struggles with anxiety and depression in a final Facebook post - and entered rehab.
He joined West onstage in November, 2016, after his rehab stint and the pair buried a social media spat and committed to work together.
The result of their collaboration is the new album Kids See Ghosts, which Cudi admits is packed with updates about his life post-rehab.
"I'm focusing on my art again and throwing myself back into it and wanting to write something with more of a positive outlook on things, because I've written the dark so well for so long," he tells Billboard in a new interview.
"I wanted to bring the opposite of that, you know? I'm at a place where I was able to do that. It took me so long to get to that place, and I was really excited to write from that standpoint when I got there.
"(My last album) Passion, Pain was more positive, but I wasn't necessarily living when I was writing it, because I wrote that album before I went to rehab, then I came out and released it. I never really got a chance to write post-rehab, show the world where I'm at right now. That's what Kids See Ghosts was: to update the world on where I'm at."
And he loved working with Kanye, adding, "I think me and Kanye are always going to make awesome s**t together. We just have this chemistry that's undeniable, especially when we have to fight for it with each other. It's really easy for us.
"Kids See Ghosts did take us a little over a year-and-a-half to just get it tight and where we wanted it to be, but the actual songwriting process and putting the songs together wasn't really hard...
"At first, when he mentioned he wanted to do the album, I didn't know how serious he was. But I was real serious about it. Months went by, and we just kept working on it and chiseling away at it."
