It was a strange Sunday night at The Orpheum when Kid Cudi finally performed in Madison.
After his last minute reschedule of the original Dec. 2 concert date, Madison was disappointed when Cudi had to ditch. While this performance was not enough to make up for the rescheduling, it was still entertaining nonetheless.
This is because while Cudi has made some amazing music in the past, he did not live up to the expertise he was once known for.
His singing definitely did not fit the hard drums and intense synths, but the passion was still there. He spent a lot of time on stage moaning and waving his arms around, but he and the crowd were into it. Overall, it was a weird performance.
All that studio time with Kanye West must have rubbed off on him, because Cudi has developed a sense for the grandeur and the introspective. At least that was what he was going for with the theme of the show: the audience entering his mind.
Cudi literally appeared out of a cloud of smoke into some odd red lighting and belting his heart out to his hit “REVOFEV” while completely off key. As the show progressed he began to sing on key and show off his musical abilities, but his lack of sobriety steadily progressed as well.
After taking a probably unnecessary break, Cudi returned to the stage to sing about marijuana and also smoke a joint. He and his drummer went into a deep jam on the track “Marijuana.” He proceeded to moan into his microphone and occasionally yell the word marijuana. The rapper even started to forget the words to a few of his songs and had to restart the tracks, which he tried to pull off gracefully.
There were many moments similar to his performance during “Marijuana,” which were weird and potentially damaging to the quality of the music, but were also eye-opening to Cudi’s appealing personality and his ability to keep a crowd entertained.
To convey the “entering Cudi’s mind” theme on the stage, gravestones surrounded him, along with a tube tv, barbed wire, an old couch and other weird objects. In regards to his strange set-up, Cudi reiterated to the crowd “this is what my mind looks like” and proceeded to ask audience members if they were watching the tv screen.
Only the people standing in the front could see it, but it showed videos that resonated with Cudi, such as Looney Toons clips.
Arguably the most hilarious and notable Cudi moment goes to his acoustic session on the old couch. He spent a fair amount of time struggling to figure out the chords, sang/moaned a little, and then smashed his guitar during a later song — most likely because he was stoned. It was all so bizarre that it was impossible to divert attention anywhere else, and he might possibly be a genius for doing so.
He finally got around to most of his hits, and while it was slightly disappointing that West didn’t come on stage during “Erase Me,” Chip Tha Ripper did make an appearance for “Hyyerr” and “T.G.I.F.,” which made the already emotional crowd more excited.
But Cudi must have terrible time management because he ended with the slow-tempo “Ashin’ Kusher,” which didn’t feel like the end of a performance and there wasn’t an encore of a more popular song.
At the end of the day, the show was entertaining and fun, despite how weird and confusing Cudi was. Looking back, perhaps Cudi intended the show to be so confusing and wanted the crowd to feel disjointedly entertained. But who knows? With genius creative types like Cudi and West, it is impossible to tell what is intentional and what is a by-product of their eccentricity.
