Man on the Moon: The End of Day album cover
The track was released February 5, 2008, as the first single off Cudi's debut mixtape "A Kid Named Cudi" (July 17, 2008). When the mixtape was discovered by Kanye West, he signed Cudi to his label GOOD Music. The track was also featured on his debut studio album, "Man on the Moon: The End of Day" (September 15, 2009), where it was titled "Day 'n' Nite (Nightmare)", as the album's titles shared the theme of dreaming.
It peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Dave Heaton summarizes the story of the track in his review here:
lonely guy sits in his room and dreams of success. He uses drugs to calm his fears and fend off night terrors. He eventually gets recognized as the star he always knew he was, and lives the superstar life… or maybe he's still dreaming about that stage of his life, and we're just witnessing what his dreams sound like
Cudi shared his own motivation for the song in an interview with Complex here:
My uncle that I lived with passed in 2006. We were actually beefing because he forced me out the house when I didn’t have another situation set up, so I was bitter. I never apologized for it, and that kills me. That’s why I wrote ‘Day ’N’ Nite.’
The track was produced by Dot da Genius and Kid Cudi himself. It's 3:41 long.
Genius features a lot of annotations for the lyrics, check them out here.
You can find a lot of information on the track on Wikipedia here.
Listen to it on Soundcloud here.
The music video was released October 8, 2009:
Get the lyrics on Genius
Playlist of all Tracks of the Day: http://spoti.fi/2DuGZ4s
Let me know about your favorite Rap tracks in the comments!