Kid Cudi, the genre-blending artist from Cleveland, Ohio, is stepping into a fresh creative chapter with his upcoming single, “Grave,” arriving July 11. The track will serve as the next glimpse into his evolving soundscape and appears on his forthcoming album “FREE,” a project he’s described as his take on pop music.
More than just a sonic shift, “Grave” is arriving with a visually gripping music video directed by Samuel Bayer, the visionary behind iconic works like Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Bayer and Cudi recently teased the music video with behind-the-scenes footage from their June shoot, showing Cudi in a leather jacket, singing introspective lines: “I’ll stop running to the grave, oh baby / Just to live another day, no maybes.”
This single follows “Neverland,” a track that coincided with the debut of Cudi’s short film of the same name. The movie, directed by horror specialist Ti West and produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival. Showcasing Cudi’s deepening ties with both music and cinema.
While many fans associate Cudi with emotionally raw hip-hop and spacey alternative sounds, his next move is aimed at new territory. “My album FREE is a pop album. The Cudi version of pop. Y’all gonna love it,” he shared earlier this year on social media. Given his track record of pushing boundaries, from Man on the Moon to last year’s INSANO and INSANO (NITRO MEGA), expectations are high for what’s next.
The journey to FREE hasn’t been without challenges. Cudi’s had a rough past year, dealing with a foot injury sustained at Coachella and a scary home break-in during California’s wildfire chaos. Still, with Grave and the promise of FREE, it seems he’s channeling that turbulence into reinvention, not just surviving, but thriving in a space uniquely his own.
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