Fresh off the release of a new song from Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales soundtrack, Jaden Smith joined Ebro Darden and Peter Rosenberg for a 30-minute chat on Hot 97 early Wednesday.
The everlasting influence of Kid Cudi, who recently teased the impending arrival of the third entry in the Man on the Moon album series, was among the topics broached during the wide-ranging discussion. Speaking on how he's recently taken inspiration from Brian Wilson's well-documented brilliance during the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds era, Jaden—at around the five-minute mark below—urged other creatives to take seriously the task of studying the classics (including Cudi's debut) of previous eras.
"I just think that it's important for younger generations to always like go back to, like, some of the best albums of all time and not just listen to what the best album of the year was," Jaden said. "Listen to whatever the best albums of all time have been or, you know, whatever that is for them. It might be something else for everyone else. I just think that whatever it is for you—whether it's the Beatles or whether it's Man on the Moon 1 or whatever it is that you feel is your favorite album of all time—you just need to go back to that and make sure that we continue to study that music. And then the music that those people studied."
Later, Jaden shouted out Cudi as his favorite artist and detailed the sense of community he felt as a young fan.
"Cudi would always say things that just would, like, change my life," Jaden said around 24 minutes into the interview. "And then, you know, I thought it was just me and my brother for a while. Then I got older and started going to festivals and then I realized, oh man, everybody has felt that from Cudi. Everybody says that Cudi saved their life. … Everybody had that same experience listening to Cudi. If someone listened to Cudi, you knew something about them. You could tell certain things about them."
Jaden's CTV3: Cool Tape Vol. 3 is out now. Up top, stream the Pete Wentz-referencing Spider-Man soundtrack cut "I'm Ready." And below, peep his full discussion with Ebro and Peter from Wednesday:
