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Kid Cudi: Live at the BBQ :: Inside the imagination of the rolodexed rapper

By Brandon Perkins   Photography by Emiliano Granado

09/16/08 :: URB 155

“It’s Yourz” karaoke-machine freestyler turned rapper turned film student turned gourmet grocer turned model turned rapper and singer turned NJ street quarterback. Maybe that’s it. And except for his turn manning the coffee, candy and nut section of NYC’s Dean & DeLuca (and maybe that brief model career), it all takes a touch of imagination. Especially the music.

Kid Cudi prides himself on thinking outside of whatever box a person could ever paint him into. He’d appreciate the creative effort necessary for such a thing but, honestly, fuck that box.

“You have to have the imagination to see some shit. And I try to make my music visual,” Kid Cudi says, still somewhat sleepy despite the afternoon hour. “In college, I took screenwriting, so I know how to set a scene and [write] descriptions. All that is portrayed through my music. In that one horrible year in college, that was something I picked up. I’m a real imaginative person, that’s why cinematography is important. I want you to close your eyes and see what you want to.”

Kid Cudi doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. He’s got a mixtape, Emile and Plain Pat present: A Kid Called Cudi, and it only features one of the two singles that have made him a name of notice. And the one cut, “Day N Nite,” isn’t the Crookers remix that’s been blogged and hipster-danced to death. And it’s only snippeted. But the collection of spacey N*E*R*D channeling sing-song jams that actually made the tape are floatingly epic…oh, and 10*Deep did make a dope t-shirt to celebrate the release.

“Man on the Moon (The Anthem)” truly lives up to its parenthetical build. One of the more memorable tracks from A Kid Called Cudi, it spans ideals, expectations and self-reflection, proposing, “If I was simple in the mind/Everything would be fine/ Maybe if I was a jerk to girls/Instead of being nice and speaking kind words.” At his most inspiring, Kid Cudi rides melodies. His singing suggests genuine emotion and the intellect to describe it. The only variances heard in his rapping, equally melodic in enthusiasm, are a slightly harder edge and grandstand posturing. He might as well be crooning those raps.

“I like melodies that feel good, it makes the flow more exciting,” he says. “It gives that twist and turn. When I’m saying it or listening to it or singin’ it back, it just feels good, rather than just saying a rap. It sounds a whole lot more interesting…it doesn’t sound so dry. It brings a lot of my character out. I’m a real feel-good type person. And I feel like I have a real good spirit in me. I feel like I can portray that through the melody.”

Plain Pat caught that melody. Best known as KanyeWest’s A&R, Pat met Cudi at a Def Jam meeting and kept the Kid’s demo in his car. Pat’s rolodex certainly opens up a few doors. The Cleveland-by-Brooklyn MC/singer doesn’t rule out a Kanye guest on his ’09 debut album, Man on the Moon, but he can confirm some studio time with The Alchemist. Considering that Cudi will fall under the Fools Gold/DowntownRecords umbrella, his collaborators will have that patented flare, too. And yet, industry connects weren’t what got him playing the part of Broadway Joe Namath on the streets of northern New Jersey, at a BBQ thrown by a total stranger where Cudi had just performed—fee free. That just took a MySpace message and some friendly enticements.

“It was his going away party,” Cudi says of the host who hit him up. “Basically, he said he couldn’t afford the performance fee and all that, but what he could provide was unlimited beer…like four kegs, unlimited blunts, all the cheeseburgers you can eat and girls. And I couldn’t turn that down. It’s all about a good time.”

Bonus: Kid Cudi speaks on recording with Kanye


Check out Kid Cudi on tour with Hollywood Holt now

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