Album Review : Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven

Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven… is something. It’s hard to really explain, despite the fact that it can be as simplistic as saying Kid Cudi is trying to be a rough – Kurt Cobain – with his sad-boy like approach to the grunge-noise-alt-rock kind of project he decided to put out. Remember WZRD? Well, this album feels like taking that album back to the pre-production phase, give Cudi full control get rid of Dot the Genius’ production, then get rid of the full bodied verses or polishes.

His first single, “Confused” is a complete mess.  It’s rough and hokey to a point where it feels that a lot of the production carries over without any variety. It’s mostly redundant. But, don’t get it twisted, as an avid Kid Cudi fan, there was some bias when it came to listening Indicud, which wasn’t necessarily bad, but Cudi definitely felt lost in it. As lost as a sober person trying to do too much that doesn’t end up complimenting each other, like LeBouf with his zany/outtathisworld attitude and overcompensation for mediocrity.

Curiosity delivered me this self-sanctified hellhole that Cudi thinks represents his greatness and his mortal ending, where he then spiritually comes back with atrocious demos on the second disc, that was way more then unnecessary. Like on “The Return of Chip Douglas,” Kid Cudi is following a standard sounding guitar rift with rough plucks, but what really becomes a bother is the mumbling at the end, as if he was a soul lost in his own existential world of sadness.

Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven isn’t a disastrous mess, more so like highway collision. There are tracks that have replay value and sound just quite okay, like “Judgmental C**t,” and “Man in the Night,” where there are actual layers and somewhat fine-tuned production. But they are still overall bad tracks.

And speaking of somewhat fine, there was some lightness in hearing Beavis and Butthead commentate on music and life. It’s very niche and offers a few laughs to a dreadful album by Cudi, which was very welcomed here. Though, in retrospect, it really feels like extra bullshit – in the vain of The Incredible True Story, by Logic.

“Séance Chaos,” is too hard for the sake of; the drums are getting banged with poor rhythm and the guitars are just fucking with a speaker at this point. This actually plays as the interlude between “Judgmental C**t,” and “Fairy Tale Remains,” which plays off the former as a stress reliever. The former is a song about all the haters with some negativity in a grunge/garage like track, but the transition from that to thrash rock just feeds Cudi’s vibe. It doesn’t hit with it intentions.

It’s not hard to say this album is deservingly laughable, but it’s something that should be hidden from existence. It makes Satellite Flight and Indicud sound great upon revisits… all right, that’s a fib, there isn’t much one can even say that doesn’t sound painful when reviewing this album, or even speaking of the others in relation to.

Even so, it periodically feels distorted and unconventional the way it transitions from track to track. The album is devoid of positivity, which can be understandable from his type of music, but easily Cudi loses that mindlessly. Take for example “The Nothing,” where Cudi uses random fairy tale analogies and nursery rhyme schemes to talk about cocaine addiction in an ominous rift of boredom.

It’s easy to comprehend where the faults are, and the main fault comes from Cudi’s own desire to appease. Yet this; this album is devoid of quality one should expect from popular and successful artists of Cudi’s scape. So who is he really appeasing? Not me, that’s for sure.

It’s troublesome to know that Cudi has the capability of producing better music. But for the most part, he should focus on arrangement and engineering when producing these types of albums. Not to say I’m against Cudi’s ambitions and desires, but if he took more precautions then his album would possibly come with a better end result.

It’s truly dreadful, sort of. It’s pretty much empty; for the most part. And lastly the album is easily forgettable.

.666/10