Mario Sundar’s Top of Mind

A repeat viewing of apocalyptic classic "Children of Men" yielded this gem of a song - Franco Battiato's cover of the Rolling Stones' Ruby Tuesday.

Flawless!

Yes! Here's hoping "Where the Wild Things Are" breaks a dry spell that the box-office finds itself this weekend.

And, frankly this soundtrack is a great way to end a rrrreally long day!

The guy's like 24 and just released a super-duper-unconventional hip-hop album following his cult mixtape ("A Kid named Cudi").

Having listened to the album non-stop for the past few weeks, I was glad that many of my conclusions about Cudi were true:

1. He's the Obama of Hip-Hop:

The album's not your typical hip-hop release but instead fuses different sounds and (wait for it...) features singing (much like his contributions on Kanye's 808 album - another unconventional hip-hop release).

There’s all different types of music now in this day and age coming up. I’ve seen a lot of things, I’m 25, it’s not like the 70’s when genres were separate and things weren’t being fused together.

With me, my fans are versatile and they’re gonna go pick up Raekwon’s album and probably Jay’s album, and then they’re gonna pick up mine and then if the Killers drop an album they might pick that up too. My fans have an eclectic ear, we like all things and the generation we came up in we have a wide variety of taste.

He belongs to a different generation of hip-hop musician and that can only be good as the genre matures and evolves. Cudi much like his mentor Kanye West ("Jesus Walks", "Hey Mama") are more comfortable talking about universal, mainstream middle class themes like loss of a loved parent, pursuit of happiness, the american dream, etc. than rapping about drugs, sex and misogyny (http://bit.ly/YEQHe)

2. He's a story-teller

His album's not just a bunch of songs thrown together, and I remember telling my friend that "Man on the Moon" is all about how he gets to the Moon (a metaphor for his overnight fame) and the next album's probably what happens now that he's there. Looks like there could be a trilogy in the works:

Well I think that it’s important to have a plan and to not just go in the studio and be like, “oh I’m gonna make these 10 albums!” Sometimes you have to sit back and strategically think out the process. Those are always the good albums; the well thought out joints.

Once End of Day drops it’s the beginning of the tale of the man on the moon and I think people are gonna be lost in it and intrigued by the second and third installment of Man on the Moon. That’s what I’m trying to do, I want people to really get into the story and be with it.

3. He's cool like Johnny Depp:

One of the reasons I think Depp's one of the finest actors of the generation (besides the fact that he's the only one who can work across genres - drama, comedy, musical, etc.) is that he could care less about what you thought about his choices and he intentionally doesn't pander to his fans.

Cudi's likewise.

People need to stop being so judgmental and let me make what I want to make. People say, “he’s making too much of this, too much of that, he’s too pop, this is not this, this is not that.” Exactly. It’s not supposed to be like that or like something you’ve heard, it’s meant to confuse and it’s meant to be out there in its own world and its own space next to nothing.

The day that people stop being critics and just see things for the way they are the world will be a lot happier.

Amen to that. Read the entire article here - http://bit.ly/vj0sw