Before we get started, a disclaimer: KIDS SEE GHOSTS was released just a few hours ago so this is a statement forged by only a couple listens meaning it is INDISPUTABLE FACT and anyone who dares to question me is a mortal enemy with absolutely no taste. Good. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way the best song on KIDS SEE GHOSTS is “Reborn,” or as its confusingly mislabeled on streaming services right now, “Feel the Love.” (It’s track five, okay?)
In case you need a refresher: KIDS SEE GHOSTS is the new joint album from Kanye West and Timothée Chalamet fave Kid Cudi and the third album to come out of the Wyoming sessions that’ve produced Pusha T’s Daytona and Kanye West’s Ye. In comparison to Kanye’s other project, KIDS SEE GHOSTS is in a totally different league. Turns out when you scrap an album after a TMZ appearance during which you declare slavery a choice then create a record basically from scratch in the following weeks the results are not great. Who knew? Ye’s hurried production time reveals itself in Twitter Draft material rhymes like, “None of us would be here without cum.” KIDS SEE GHOSTS is a project that feels thoughtful in a way Ye never does.
That dichotomy feels most striking on “Reborn,” which deals with a lot of the same themes Kanye rapped about on with Ye but in a way that doesn’t cause you to mentally rifle through every controversy the rapper’s gone through over the past month to get the joke. “Reborn” finds both Kanye and Cudi dealing with the personal issues, often aired out in public, they’ve overcome. Kanye alludes to his bipolar disorder and the public controversies it may have caused (“I was off the meds, I was called insane / What a awesome thing, engulfed in shame”) while still leaving room for some dopey lines like “All of you Mario, it's all a game.”
The antidote, it seems, to Kanye’s recent desire to fixate on the most recent of pasts is Cudi, who touches on his struggle with depression in his verse. “I had my issues, ain't that much I could do / But, peace is something that starts with me, with me,” he raps in a sing-song over a beat that would have been right at home on an album like Cudi’s beloved 2009 release Man on the Moon.
It’s the chorus on “Reborn,” though, that really pulls the track together and makes it KIDS SEE GHOSTS’ best. As you, a genius, have probably surmised from the song’s title, the message of rebirth repeats throughout: “I'm so, I'm so reborn, I'm movin' forward / Keep movin' forward, keep movin' forward.” While a lot of the music coming out of these Wyoming recording sessions deals largely with relitigating the events of these past couple months, “Reborn,” at least for these two artists, offers a way forward.