Kid Cudi returns today with “The Rage,” his first new song since the release of his sixth album Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin in December 2016. The track appears on the soundtrack to the upcoming film Rampage—a loose adaptation of the classic video game series—and will undoubtedly sound familiar to some fans.
Cudi samples Smashing Pumpkins‘ 1995 classic “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” on the track, flipping frontman Billy Corgan’s vocals on the chorus:
Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage
Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage
Then someone will say, what is lost can never be saved
Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage
“Bullet With Butterfly Wings” served as the lead single off Smashing Pumpkins' Diamond-certified third album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It was certified Gold in 1996 and won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1997:
Corgan broke down how the vocals that Cudi samples on “The Rage” found their way onto “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” in a 1997 interview with Guitar World:
Believe it or not, the original riff from this song came to me during one of the Siamese Dream recording sessions. Somewhere, I have a tape of us from 1993 endlessly playing the ‘world is a vampire’ part over and over. But it wasn’t until a year and a half later that I finished the song, writing the ‘rat in the cage’ part on an acoustic guitar at the BBC studios in London on the same day that “Landslide” was recorded.
Elsewhere on the track, Cudi drops lyrics about trying to save the world and fighting inner battles:
Searchin' for that release, swimmin' at it, repeat
Wash your hands of them sins and fightin' ‘til we see peace
It’s the least we could do in a world that needs the brave
Know the lost can be saved, survivin’ the end of days
Although not much is known about what Cudi has planned next, he was spotted in the studio with Kanye West last year in Tokyo and last month in Wyoming alongside Nas. CyHi The Prynce previously said that Kanye would be producing the entirety of Kid Cudi’s next project, although neither artist has confirmed that claim.
Read all the lyrics to Kid Cudi’s “The Rage” and Smashing Pumpkins' “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” on Genius now.
