Kid Cudi
When you think about rappers who embrace reinventing themselves, Kid Cudi is the first that comes to mind. One of the biggest stars to emerge from hip-hop’s blog era, Cudi broke out with “Day ʻNʼ Nite” and his impactful A Kid Named Cudi mixtape, both of which impressed his mentor Kanye West, who later tapped Cudi to work on his seminal 808s & Heartbreak album and has called him “the most influential artist of the past 10 years.” A decade later, Cudi has maintained a ubiquitous presence in hip-hop for his innovation and brilliance.
Born Scott Mescudi, the Cleveland native is responsible for a key shift in hip-hop. He broke new ground by combining alternative and electronic music with hip-hop, using those inspirations to create his experimental style, sometimes traversing multiple genres at once. All the while he remained fearless in his expression, no matter how dark or light his lyrics were. That’s the thing about Cudi: His music has always reminded you that you’re not alone in your battles. He is you, and you are him.
Today, Cudi is an omnipresent figure in pop culture who has inspired many. He’s a voice for young creatives who don’t fit in. He’s a therapeutic light for people who need a helping hand. He’s a fashion icon. He’s more than a cool cameo in television and movies, but a full-fledged actor. At 35, Cudi continues to challenge the norm, to always be authentic, and to be bold.
We asked several other artists, designers, and celebrity friends to share how Cudi has become a major influence around the world. The legend of Mr. Rager never dies; it just grows stronger. Buy a copy here.
Kanye West
“When I first heard Cudi, his voice, his melody, his subject matter, and the combination of him putting the melody with the rap in a way that I hadn’t really heard since Bone Thugs felt really new. When I heard his mixtape, I said I wanted to write with him.
“I remember working on 808s & Heartbreak and he was sitting in the front area in the Hawaii studio. I was on the laptop, and he was like, ‘OK, this is what I got... In the night I hear them talk.’ It went somewhere else and, of course, I put the pop—‘the coldest story ever told,’ which [came] from me listening to country music and Coldplay. How that happened is how we’ve written music together over the years.”
Lil Yachty
“The first time I met Cudi, I was with Rocky. That was 2016, when I had just started doing music and was walking in [the Yeezy] Season 3 [show]. We were at Kanye’s studio and they were makingThe Life of Pablo. I wasn’t cool enough to go in the studio yet, so I was sitting in the waiting room, like the homie. I had brought some girls, so I was sitting there with some girls and assistants. We were there for hours. After the session was over, they walked out and I saw Cudi walk by. I was like, ‘That’s crazy.’
“Later, he had a show in Atlanta and I got backstage passes. I can't remember how [I got the tickets]; I think he gave them to me. I met him backstage before the show and he was so nice and cool. That was the longest conversation I’ve ever had [with him]. My brain was racing so fast. I kept trying to think of things to talk [to him] about so that the conversation wouldn’t get awkward and quiet.
“I’m a super-huge fan, and I've been listening to Cudi since I was a kid. ‘Copernicus Landing’ is one of my favorite Cudi songs. There’s no lyrics—not even a beat. It’s fucking crazy. And it’s one of my favorite things to listen to when I go to sleep. I’m super appreciative of everything he’s done and for being himself, because it helped me grow up as a man and opened up my creativity. He’s a big part of why I wanted to act, because he started acting. Even with modeling. I definitely appreciate him for being him so I could be me.”
Pharrell
“Cudi, on one hand, represents the freedom to be into many things and have a really serious, informed opinion about those things to take what he likes in terms of inspiration and be able to turn it into a solid thought or concept. That’s who he is as a person. On the other hand, he also marches to the beat of his own drum.
“His confidence is not in how good he is. His confidence is how authentic his conviction is. You know, what he thinks is fundamentally wrong is wrong, and what he thinks is fundamentally right is right. And whether you agree with him or not, you can tell he believes that, and his belief in his convictions and his consistency in his convictions gives him the taste that he has, but it also is what his fans love about him so much.
“When they say Cudi is the GOAT, they’re talking about the consistency of his convictions and how that’s played out into the choices that he makes, the taste that he has, and the tone that he takes with everything that he does. That’s my idea of Cudi.”
Schoolboy Q
“Me and my boy Al used to listen to ‘Higher’ every morning, hotboxing the car. We’d save up our little $20, get a little dub, smoke them little two joints, try to get two and a half out that bitch. We just smoked. Cudi gassed it. We be in that bitch high as hell. Every morning, dawg. It never failed.
“When Man on the Moon came out, it was just a different vibe, and it was no shit I ever heard before. I was just like, ‘What the fuck am I listening to?’ I didn’t get it. Like, why do I like this shit? I kept playing it, and then I got it. I’m like, ‘This shit is just hard.’ Where I come from, I was only listening to a certain style of music. Cudi opened my mind up to all that shit. I used to listen to… N*E*R*D was as far as I got. But Cudi opened my mind to everything. I discovered The Eagles because of Cudi. I discovered Nirvana because of Cudi. Black Sabbath because of Cudi. Portishead, I would say, because of Cudi.
“I don’t look at Cudi as a rapper. I don’t look at him as a rap star. I don’t look at him as an electro [artist] or whatever they wanna call him. A singer. That n***a is just a dope-ass musician. Like, what the fuck do you categorize this dude as? Just a crazy-ass artist. Dope as fuck.”
Takashi Murakami
“Two or three years ago, Kanye and Cudi both came to my studio [in Japan]. A few days before their visit, I was suddenly told that they were coming and that Cudi would play a guitar and Kanye would sing. I was told to have everything from the guitar to a specific speaker system ready at my studio. Upon their arrival, without so much as a greeting, Kanye started singing while looking at his phone and Cudi started playing the guitar. They performed for about half an hour and then said, ‘Let’s talk,’ and we discussed creating the characters [for the cover of Kids See Ghosts].
“They each had ideas for their own characters—a fox for Cudi and a bear for Kanye—as well as the cloud/ghost characters, and I quickly sketched out their ideas over our four-hour conversation. In the end, only the cloud/ghost characters made it onto the album cover.
“We’ve never had a live concert like that in my studio before, so my entire studio was a bit shell-shocked. Everyone was just staring, with their mouths open.”
Ben Baller
“I was in San Diego at a memorial, visiting my boy Q, who founded WorldStarHipHop, and I got a text. Cudi’s manager hit me up. Three or four text exchanges go back and forth, then Cudi calls me. I was inside this Japanese bargain store, killing time. I was like, ‘Cudi, what’s good?’ He goes, ‘I got this idea. My birthday’s coming up. How fast can you make a chain?’ I was like, ‘What made you hit me up?’ He was like, ‘You know what? I’ve never had a custom chain before.’ I was like, ‘What? You had a Jacob [the Jeweler] Jesus piece.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, ’Ye gave me that. I started going back and forth with Pharrell, and Pharrell was like, ‘You gotta fuck with Ben Baller.’’
“So we started bouncing ideas off of each other. He was texting me pictures and sent me a drawing that Murakami did of him, ’cause Murakami did Kids See Ghosts. I looked at it and was like, ‘This is cool, but this ain’t gonna translate into jewelry.’ He sends me another picture, an old picture of a Bape Milo character [of him] that NIGO® designed from 2009-2010. He was like, ‘You know I used to work at the Bape [SoHo] store?’ I thought he was joking. I looked at the picture and was like, ‘This is it. I’m gonna put white diamonds here, blue sapphires here…’ I was breaking down everything, and then he goes, ‘Yo, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to change the eyeballs. I don’t want black eyeballs. I want two red ruby eyeballs, and I want the entire thing to be one stone.’ I was like, ‘You sure?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, I’m the stoner. I’m the kid rager.’
“Later, I asked what he wanted on the back of [the chain]. He was like, ‘I want that shit to say General Cud, and I want my Cudi logo.’ We get this going and I’m like, ‘Bro, where are we meeting?’ He was like, ‘I’m at the studio. You need to pull up right now.’ I get to the studio and this dude’s smiling ear to ear. I pull out the chain and everyone in the room was like, ‘Holy shit.’ Cudi’s bugging out and goes, ‘I gotta leave the room. I gotta FaceTime my daughter and show her this chain.’ He was in there for, like, 15 to 20 minutes. I think he called me twice after I left the studio. I think the motherfucker slept with the chain on.”
Rob Stone
“I discovered Kid Cudi my freshman year in high school. It was 2009 and the ‘Day ‘N’ Nite’ video had just dropped. I had just gotten the new Sidekick and that was my ringtone. I thought I was the shit. I’ll never forget my dad saying, ‘Why do you got that as a ringtone? What is that?’ He’s an old head, and he wasn’t up on game about Cudi yet. I thought it was dope. I saw the video and I thought I was one of the first people, out of my friends, at least, who was definitely listening to Kid Cudi. Ever since then, I’ve been locked in.
“The first Kid Cudi album I bought was Man on the Moon II. I listened to that all the way through. I remember at one point, after high school, me and my friends starting doing LSD. We were already listening to his music, but his music started speaking to us more. We were more curious about spirituality and different dimensions of life around that time, and even though a lot of the lyrics on Man on the Moon II aren’t necessarily about LSD, he showed me the truth and not to be scared about not knowing [everything], because nobody really knows. I probably wouldn’t be as in tune with my emotions, or talk about my emotions in my music, if it wasn’t for him.”
Additional reporting by Rob Alexander.
This story appears in our special, limited-edition "If You Build It, They Will Come" book, which features Kid Cudi and NIGO® on the cover. Buy a copy here.