Kid Cudi
Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi turned Cleveland teenage isolation into a woozy new hybrid of rap and confession, half-singing melodic hooks over spacious, atmospheric beats instead of rapping bar for bar. Signed to Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music after 'Day 'N' Nite' broke through in 2008, he made vulnerability and off-key humming into hip-hop's next mainstream register. His Man on the Moon albums reoriented an entire generation of rappers-turned-singers toward mood over machismo.
Cudi has named the Pharcyde among the alternative hip-hop groups that inspired him when he first started rapping in 2003, part of a lineage of West Coast oddballs who traded gangsta posturing for humor and melancholy.
listen forPlay the Pharcyde's 'Passin' Me By' and then Cudi's 'Day 'N' Nite' — both trade tough-guy bravado for a hazy, melodic vulnerability that was unusual for its rap era.
Alongside the Pharcyde, Cudi has cited A Tribe Called Quest as one of the alternative hip-hop groups he leaned on as a teenager, absorbing their conversational, jazz-inflected approach to a genre otherwise dominated by hardcore posturing.
listen forPlay Tribe's 'Can I Kick It?' and then Cudi's 'Pursuit of Happiness' — the loose, laid-back cadence and genre-blurring instinct (jazz then, indie-rock synths now) run through both.
Cudi has named Pink Floyd among the bands that shaped his rock side-project WZRD, and the same spacious, melancholy atmosphere carries through his core solo catalog — long moody builds standing in for hip-hop's usual verse-hook urgency.
listen forPlay Pink Floyd's 'See Emily Play' and then Cudi's 'Mr. Rager' — both let a woozy, drifting mood take precedence over hooks, favoring atmosphere over immediacy.