Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi and Kenya Barris have joined forces to bring audiences the unique Netflix television event ‘Entergalactic.’
The original, animated story chronicles young Black love as both Jabari (voiced by Mescudi) and Meadow (voiced by Jessica Williams) both attempt to balance love and success as they fall for each other as new neighbors.
The Netflix feature is certainly an explosion of art, music and fashion with a backdrop of New York City.
‘Entergalactic’ also boasts an all-star cast including Timothée Chalamet, Ty Dolla $ign, Laura Harrier, Vanessa Hudgens, Christopher Abbott, 070 Shake, Jaden Smith, Keith David, Teyana Taylor, Arturo Castro and Macaulay Culkin.
AllHipHop’s Rea Davis caught up with Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi and Jessica Williams to discuss the importance of an animated Black love story.
AllHipHop: Scott, why was it important for you to tell a story that chronicles love, music, fashion and art with the backdrop of New York City?
Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi: Man I felt like you know I need to do something innovative and new with “Entergalactic,” my new album because I was in the place where I was kind of bored of the same thing of just releasing an album dropping two music videos and that be it. You know I wanted something a little bit bigger. I wanted a whole event behind it, and um you know it was important to just like kind of bring something that had never been done before. Um and you know for the kid that’s like 7 years old who’s going to like see these trailers and be like oh I’ve never seen animation like that and you know and get inspired and see the freshness and be like, “Ah man those are cool shoes.” Like these are things that like the culture needs. We gotta keep feeding the culture in this way you know. To have like Virgil be the costume designer and have him involved makes it’s a little more special you know.
AllHipHop: Jessica what was it like getting into character for Meadow. She’s like the it girl. She’s really cool and well-rounded.
Jessica Williams: Oh my God. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um, she is the it-girl, and I do appreciate that. For her, I think it’s animated so it was something that you know I just kind of had to trust would come together in the end, which I think it did really well. I think my job was to basically show up for her and act and do things the way that I felt instinctually she would respond to things while also honoring the script and bouncing off of Scott’s performance as well. Um so it was kind of a dance. Then the animation studios sort of rendered the characters all based on our expressions, so a lot of times we would be recording, and for me, they would have a camera on my face to kind of record like my reactions and stuff. So it was this really cool interesting experience where I was voice acting but also just acting with my chest, like just acting as well with my face, which was a really a cool experience because I’ve probably acted more than recording animation.
AllHipHop: This is a romantic story, so do you feel like you pushed any boundaries with this, and the second question is who are your “Top 5” favorite rappers dead or alive?”
Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi: One of the things that you know was important for me is to tell a Black love story, and that’s something that we don’t really see that often animated or live action in the movies or TV, so that was really like the main goal like for me, and this rapper thing, can we give you 3?………. Tupac, Jay-Z and Missy Elliott.
Jessica Williams: I’m going to go with Missy Elliott, Jay-Z and Tupac.