Kid Cudi, singer, rapper, actor, and self-proclaimed “rager”, held his Cud Life Tour at the Bank of America Pavilion last Friday to promote his recently released third studio album Indicud. His opening acts included rapper Logic, whose claim to fame was a mixtape named Young Sinatra, and Tyler, the Creator, a producer and rapper from Cali-based rap collective Odd Future.
As the first act, Logic set the stage for about half an hour as the Pavilion started to fill up and audience members sang along with the songs that were most popular from his mixtapes.
Logic confessed things like, “I never thought I’d be on tour with Kid Cudi,” and “You can make it too!”
The commotion started as soon as Tyler, the Creator and his group members, Jasper and Taco, all came on stage. Tyler told the crowd that he was not “into” the way the seats were set up at Boston’s famed pavilion – he then proceeded to invite the entire audience to move closer to the stage, “all the way up,” to be closer to him. The entire audience stampeded up towards the stage. Fearing a possible mosh-pit, staff quickly interfered.
According to Tyler, staff said that if the audience did not move back into their seats, they would cut his set. Tyler responded with an, “[Expletive] that!” Staff cut the set shortly after. When the crowd still did not move back to their seats, headliner Kid Cudi himself came out, well before he was supposed to perform.
He was dressed in shorts, a plaid shirt, and a hoodie. He calmly asked the crowd to move to their seats so that Tyler could come back and finish his set, and because he “didn’t want any of us getting hurt.” It was all very paternal of him. And the crowd listened.
On to Kid Cudi’s set: the set list seemed to take the same amount of songs from each of his pieces of work, starting with his first mixtape, A Kid Named Cudi, all the way to his newest album, Indicud.
The songs that the audience communally sang the loudest were “Up, Up & Away,” “Pursuit of Happiness,” and “Lord of the Sad and Lonely.” His collaboration with David Guetta called “Memories” was also well-received. The hazy air and beam of lights that seemed to eminate from the stage corresponded with the cadences in his music – and the audience moved along with them. Almost everyone was standing on chairs and swaying together.
One of the grandest things about the concert was his set and costume. He wore a full-on spacesuit, that was clearly designed for him after watching the movie After Earth and being inspired by Jaden Smith’s attire in it.
Cudi has had two albums titled Man on the Moon, and even on Indicud there is a song called “Flight of the Moon Man,” so it was only right that his set be a slice of the moon.
He rocked through the stage, using the moon as a prop to symbolize his other-worldliness. Kid Cudi once tweeted, “I want my ashes scattered in space.”
For an artistst as talented and undefiable as him, it would be very fitting.
