Kid Cudi Explains How “Entergalactic” Became an Animated Special

If Kid Cudi really is Retire his persona of a rapperRecent interviews indicate that Monday night may have been an early farewell party.

The star smiled as he answered questions at the Netflix Tudum Theater, Hollywood. He also celebrated the release of the movie. “Entergalactic,” the new animated Netflix special that serves as a kind of filmic companion piece to Cudi’s new album of the same name.

“I’m just overwhelmed, you know?” Cudi, who created, starred in, and executive-produced the project, said immediately after the screening, sitting next to the film’s director, Fletcher Moules. “The past week has been really exciting to see the reviews, see the response. We’ve been working on this thing for three years, man.”

The film, which boasts an all-star cast including Jessica Williams, Timothée Chalamet, Laura Harrier, Ty Dolla $ign, Vanessa Hudgens, Jaden Smith and Macauley Caulkin, was released on Netflix on September 30 and met with a widely positive critical reception.

“We were texting this week, and I was like, I never knew that Twitter could be a platform of love,” Moules joked.

Undergirded by a number of tracks of Cudi’s trademark spacy melodic rap from the accompanying album, Netflix’s “Entergalactic”Cudi’s character Jabari is a New York City artist who is trying to make sense of the chaos that is his love life. Cudi explained that the film grew out of an initial anthology series which, in its first season, would focus on the theme of love and feature an animated episode. Cudi developed the idea in collaboration with Kenya Barris. Barris encouraged Cudi instead to change his mind and lead to “Entergalactic,”Netflix has described this special as a TV show.

Barris “told me this would be ill if we ran it all-animated, because that’s something that Netflix was looking for,” Cudi said. “So I decided to take the one animated episode that I was gonna have in my anthology and kinda just extend the story.”

“Entergalactic”The music was the first thing that I did (“Angel,” “Do What I Want”And “Willing to Trust”These three tracks were the inspiration for the initial ideas of the project. But as the project evolved, the writing of both film and record informed each other.

“The album itself came together rather quickly,” Cudi said, “just because in my mind I already knew the beats of what I wanted to cover, just kind of piecing the story in my mind early on.”

Cudi was the mastermind of the unique album and film concept that attracted its star-studded casting, from friends Ty Dolla$ign and Chalamet to Williams and Harrier. “I felt like Tony Stark, kinda like assembling the Avengers,” Cudi said, laughing.

The project might signal a bookend of sorts to the career of Kid Cudi as we’ve known it. Cudi mentioned both the album and film in a recent promotional video. InterviewZane Lowe, and his appearance Hot OnesHe was more interested in retiring his persona than making music, and was leaning towards that.

“The Kid Cudi stuff, I think I want to put it on the back burner and chill out with that,” Cudi told Lowe. “I think I want to be done with it. I think (I’m) closing the chapter on Kid Cudi. The goal for ‘Entergalactic’ — I was bored of making albums… I went into this wanting to do something epic and different.”

Cudi’s stardom was based on his influence as a musician, especially with his multi-platinum debut album in 2009. “Man on the Moon: The End of the Day,”For many years, the 38-year-old has been an actor of great success. He has appeared in blockbusters.“Need for Speed”) and indies (“James White,” “X”) and served a stint as bandleader on the alt-comedy show “Comedy Bang Bang.”

“Entergalactic”This is one of many projects that Mad Solar, the production house Cudi founded in 2020 has, is working on. It points to a greater focus on television and film, both in front and behind the camera.

Not everyone in Cudi’s camp is expecting a wholesale turnabout in his career. “Nothing to me has changed in Scott,” said Karina Manashil — his former agent and a close confidant who is now the president of Mad Solar — backstage when asked about Cudi’s recent comments. “Now everything that we’re seeing, it’s not so much a shift. It’s more he now has everything around him that allows him to do all of the things he was always capable of, and he’s in the headspace to experience all of those things.”

Cudi refused to give further details about his retirement or changes in direction, and he did not speak on Monday. Cudi instead shared a moment of vulnerability that reflected his desire to share what he wanted fans to take away from the film.

“I want people to feel hopeful that their person is out there in the world,” Cudi said. “I haven’t been lucky enough to find that person, but I made this to remind myself that ‘Scott, your person could be out there. You could have a magical moment like this with someone.’ So I know there’s a lot of people out there that feel like maybe their person isn’t out there or it’s hard to find a person, but this is supposed to be a reminder that true love does happen.”