Free

When Kid Cudi spoke with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in 2022, Cudi was contemplating closing the door on music entirely. “The Kid Cudi stuff, I think I want to put it on the back burner and chill out with that,” he said. “I think I want to be done with it.” Fifteen years deep into his uncompromising career, he’d scored a handful of megahits, pioneered the melody-driven style that’s defined the past 15 years of hip-hop, and secured his spot among the blog era’s Mount Rushmore. Then he got bored. Three years later, Cudi’s reinspired and happier than ever, following up 2024’s pair of trap-inspired albums—*INSANO* and *INSANO (NITRO MEGA)*—with a record he bills as his first-ever pop album. “I just felt like I needed to drastically make a creative leap in my career,” he tells Lowe in 2025. “I mean, people know that I’m a risk-taker, and I felt like the last five years, I hadn’t really been pushing myself.” Approaching his 11th solo album, *Free*, he asked himself a question: “What does the world not have right now that I can provide?” The answer, it turns out, was hope. The Cleveland native has never shied away from vulnerability, candidly sharing his struggles with depression over the years. On *Free*, the newlywed (he married Lola Abecassis Sartore in June 2025) testifies that it does, in fact, get better. Here he swings for the fences with pop-punk chords, massive hooks, and the occasional dubstep drop as he fights for happiness in the face of fear. “Turns out I had control of my own Truman Show,” he howls over the driving beat of “Truman Show.” And on the lighters-in-the-sky anthem “Neverland” (which he sang to his wife on their wedding day) he swoons: “My heart’s skipping/The scales tipping/It’s called living/And I could get used to it.” Introduced to the world at the age of 24, the 41-year-old rapper never pictured himself making it this far. “When I was younger, I never imagined myself in my forties—I didn’t see past 30 for me,” he tells Lowe. “And it’s just a beautiful thing to have this album as a direct representation of the joy and peace that I feel.” He recalls being overcome with emotion when recording “Salt Water,” which he closes by addressing his audience directly: “Yes, my life has been one hell of a ride,” he says, ditching his signature melodies for spoken word. “There was a time where happiness was a very far-off and distant thing for me to acquire. But I made it out of that darkness. I saw the light.”