13. Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven – Kid Cudi

If you ask me what genre Kid Cudi was going for on his recent album, I couldn’t give you a straight answer. Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven blurs the conventions of hip-hop, exploring sounds of heavy alternative rock (“Fade 2 Red”), twanged acoustics (“Handle with Care”), and new-age punk (“Séance Chaos”). Born Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi, Cudi has always been one to play by his own rules and doing so musically has made him known as one of the most notably experimental artist on the scene. On Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven, the rapper uses the majority of the 26 diverse tracks to construct a passionate mix of anger, adoration, and exhaustion that resonates with the depth of the seismic guitar chords. However, the album is surely not one-noted with other songs like “The Nothing” offering a bone-chilling, ghostly eeriness that transcends tradition. On the record, Cudi is more boundary-defining than ever before, as confessional and as primal as the album cover suggests.