Man On The Moon: The End of Day - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Man on the Moon: The End of Day received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 71, based on 15 reviews. The Boston Globe praised the experimental quality of the album: "It's spacey, adventurous, and ridiculously intriguing if only because it's so different". Complimenting Cudi's "introspective persona, ear for melody, and eclectic taste in beats," Entertainment Weekly music reviewer Simon Vozick-Levinson called him "a hyped upstart who really does represent a promising new phase in the genre's evolution." David Jeffries of Allmusic called it "a soul searcher may require more patience than your everyday debut", but "perfects the futuristic bleak-beat hip-hop Kanye purposed a year earlier, and rewards the listener with every tripped-out return." Greg Kot, writing in the Chicago Tribune, believed that the album had the potential to turn heads as well as "bum-rush the charts." Slant Magazine's Paul Schrodt wrote that the album attempts to be "both a bigger pop platform and indie credibility", and felt that Cudi's verses "are too good to ignore" so long as you do not take them too seriously. Ann Power of the Los Angeles Times called Man on the Moon a "standout release" in spite of "Cudi's voice". Billboard magazine's Michael Menachem said that the album is "anything but a traditional hip-hop recording" and that Cudi's "delivery is confident in a poetic and artful way". David Bevan of The A.V. Club said that, despite its filler, Cudi's "thick layer of open, intense self-loathing is a clever way of unifying Man On The Moon as pure mood piece, a stream-of-consciousness pop voyage that’s more Phil Collins than rap."

In a mixed review, Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone was impressed by its music, but found Cudi's raps "pedestrian". Ian Cohen of Pitchfork Media gave the album a negative review, finding it frustrating that the album felt like a failed opportunity rather than a "non-starter". He further wrote that Cudi largely smears his verses with a "flat warble" that is salvaged by auto-tune, which he remarked would be "numbing enough on its own" had it not been for the frequent "terrifyingly underwritten lyric to jolt you into sharp pangs of embarrassment." In a largely mixed review, Jon Caramanica of The New York Times expressed his astonishment at the emotional honesty embedded into Cudi's songwriting but felt his restrained vocal performance diminished his presence on the album, writing, that the album "is a colossal, and mystifying, missed opportunity, misguided if it is in fact guided at all." Citing the tracks "Solo Dolo" and on "Cudi Zone" as Cudi's most "appealingly creepy" and intricate vocal performance, on his general view of the album, Caramanica wrote that the rest of the album lacks that liveliness and drive, reducing Cudi to a "gaseous nonentity".