Entergalactic.

When I think about Kid Cudi, I think about being sixteen and feeling so seen by songs like “Pursuit of Happiness” and “Day ’N’ Night” and “Soundtrack 2 My Life.” I feel weirdly lucky to have experienced the height of my hormones at a time where music, especially Black music, was so transparent about the singer’s feelings, something I needed as a teenager, who felt like every dark and twisty emotion was happening to me alone.

For the music he put out back then, Kid Cudi has always had a soft spot in my heart, and so when I saw that he was putting out a movie, of course, I wanted to see it. Unfortunately, I do not have the same affection for animation that I do for Kid Cudi’s work. When I watched animated shows as a teenager, they always seemed to have a creepy ring to them (see: Courage the Cowardly Dog, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, and literally everything else on Cartoon Network). Then, when I got to college, I went through a very religious phase, where I watched a bunch of animated children’s movies because watching anything else felt sinful (!). Suffice it to say that I don’t, like, run to an animated movie or TV show these days.

So I was nostalgic for the work of Kid Cudi, but I wasn’t jumping to watch an animated movie, and in my limbo, the years passed? Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was at my boyfriend’s family’s house, trying to find something to watch while waiting for them to come back. In this place of boredom, maybe, my entertainment needs were lowered, because this movie finally felt like the perfect thing to watch.

Entergalactic is a rom-com-esque story about a punk-ish Black animator who falls for his next door neighbor and has to figure out how to navigate the tricky waters of that when they both could lose the comfort of their amazing loft apartments if they go for it and it doesn’t work out. Listen, this movie was so comforting to watch. For one, the animation is like this Sims style, broad strokes situation, where because it isn’t attempting to be exactly precise, you can rest in it more. It reminds me of the early 2000s, where things just were what they were, they weren’t always trying to be as close to reality as possible. There’s something really comforting about that, about a clear aesthetic distinction between our world and an imagined one, even if many of the rules of this imagined world come from our own.

I loved the animation, and I loved the comfort of this classic rom-com storyline, embodied not by people who are not striving for the mainstream, but instead are very intentional in their artistic expression, proud about the things they love, regardless of who else is into it. The main character Jabari loves riding his bike everywhere, and he isn’t teased for this, he isn’t told to get on the subway like a normal person or use his own two feet. Instead, his bike flies through the air, his bike takes him to other worlds and then lands him, smoothly, back in his own. His love interest, Meadow, rides on his bike pegs, the two of them flying, immersed in their own bubble. She, also, is her own person, with colorful eyeliner and a septum piercing, an easy way of moving through the world and a camera she takes to capture it in her own way. I love that the people falling in love are two Black artists and that they seem comfortable and confident in expressing themselves however seems truest to them.

I also love that though these characters might’ve gone through some things—as we all have, more or less—their present is secure. They’re getting to make art, they’re getting to live in big studio apartments with lots of light. They have friends who they can confide in, places they can to go when they’re having a bad day. So often, a Black story is deemed good the more the people in it suffer, a happy ending merely a sheer resilience to dying despite the odds. I love this story for not being like aggressively happy, but also not turning Black pain into entertainment for the sake of accolades and applause. This project reminds me of Rye Lane, in this way, another movie where two Black people are just falling in love and having fun and dealing with low points that do not undo their feeling of belonging in the world.

You can feel this security in the soundtrack too, which is all Kid Cudi, who has remained, since I was a teenager, consistent, it seems, in producing music with atmosphere, work that makes you feel both grounded in your body and beyond it somehow. This movie is actually a visual element to an album of the same name, which is wild to me (!) because it’s so good (!!!). It doesn’t feel supplementary to another project—it feels like its own little universe.

Another reason why it doesn’t feel supplemental: the cast is weirdly STACKED with Timothée Chalamet? Vanessa Hudgens? Jaden Smith? Ty Dolla $ign??? And you wouldn’t even know from watching it that the people in it already have fully-established careers. They are not phoning it in here—the voice actors in this film feel like they’re approaching the job with care, the characters both fleshed out and often in interesting contradistinction to each other.

When I was a teenager, Kid Cudi pulled through for me. He helped me feel grounded in my emotions and reminded me that having big feelings was part of living a life that feels open and expansive. Entergalactic did the same for me all these years later. It reminded me that to love—to risk what loving provides and what it can take away—is what makes the sky feel bright.

Image: Scott Mescudi