Perfectly at Peace
A Black Kid’s Ode to Kid Cudi
Happy to see how far I’ve come
To the same place it began
My dreams and imagination
Perfectly at peace
So I move along a bit higher
– Up Up & Away, Kid Cudi
In July 2016, I pulled up to the Divide Music Festival in Winter Park, Colorado, having woken up early to make the little-over-an-hour trip from Denver with minimal caffeine—only a promise that I’d get to see one of my heroes perform that night: Scott Mescudi, the Cleveland, Ohio native most notably known as Kid Cudi.
Leading up to that sunny day in Winter Park, admittedly, I had not given much mind to Kid Cudi’s past two album releases at that point: Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven (2015) & SATELLITE FLIGHT: The journey to Mother Moon (2014). Cudi, who has gone on the record as saying he wanted each of his albums to have a different sound, had seemingly taken a significant left from his first two Man On The Moon projects & his 2013 album Indicud.
Hearing Cudi’s debut album, Man On The Moon: The End Of Day, for the first time, I didn’t like it. Months passed before I decided to give it another try—and then it was months before I could bring myself to listen to anything else.
The first chapter in Cudi’s Man On The Moon trilogy is brilliant. From the intro track, he immediately transports you into another world, his mind, and then, with narration from Common weaved throughout, introduces you to his paranoia, as well as his unrelenting commitment to himself.
Even beyond Cudi’s debut album, on songs like “Pursuit of Happiness (Nightmare)” featuring MGMT & Ratatat, “Cudderisback” where he freestyles over a loop of Vampire Weekend’s “Ottoman,” and “The Prayer” off his 2008 mixtape A Kid Named Cudi where he flips “The Funeral” by Band of Horses, I loved that Cudi listened to the same music my white friends introduced me to.
As one of the only Black kids at my mostly white high school, I was isolated enough to think my people hadn’t heard of MGMT or Vampire Weekend—so when Black artists like Chiddy Bang crafted “Opposite of Adults” around MGMT’s “Kids,” or RZA and Lil Jon showed up in the music video for Vampire Weekend’s “Giving Up The Gun,” I saw how these art forms shaped one another and how Black people are more expansive than I was led to believe.
So when Cudi was one of the headliners for a music festival that included Passion Pit, The Fray, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, and Bleachers, I was hardly surprised. Mostly just shocked he was close enough to my new home of Colorado Springs that it wouldn’t be too far out of my way for me to drive to go see him.
Moving to a new place, a mostly white place, halfway across the United States from my people gave way to lots of wandering. Especially at a music festival, nowhere near the size of Coachella or Lollapalooza but nonetheless my first-ever music festival. Because when you’re in a new place, a mostly white place, most everything feels new. That is, until Cudi arrived.
I posted up at the main stage Cold War Kids and Passion Pit warmed up for Cudi before he let it get cold as it felt like an hour passed while a production crew moved an excessive amount of props onto the stage, including a couch, some weird ass skeleton in a hat, a chain link fence, and a nursery’s worth of trees and decorative sticks. None of which should surprise his fans—Cudi, a musician so engrossed in his artistic vision that sometimes the listener’s convenience becomes secondary.
But when the lights went dark and Cudi finally appeared on stage in shades and skinny jeans, it no longer felt like I was alone at this festival in the mountains; the music and his signature smile felt so familiar. I look back at my Snapchat memories from that night, and, surrounded by strangers, I can hear my voice amongst theirs belting out the hooks from “Soundtrack 2 My Life,” “REVOFEV,” “Up Up & Away,” and “GHOST!”
In the nine-second video clip I have of Cudi performing “GHOST!,” one of my all-time favorite Cudi songs, the video stops right before he finishes the beginning lines on his first verse:
Gotta get it through my thick head
I was so close to being dead, yeah
Kid Cudi has never shied away from being open in his music about the darkness that haunts him, how death sometimes feels awfully close. Even on Cudi’s first-ever single, “Day ’N’ Nite (Nightmare),” written as a result of not being able to find resolution with his uncle that died, he raps about trying to escape from the pain:
I try to run, but see, I’m not that fast
I think I’m first but surely finish last, last
Cudi’s willingness to be vulnerable about the hurt in his life is one of the reasons I fell in love with his music. And still he smiled. Still he danced in front of hundreds of multi-colored balloons in the “Make Her Say” music video. And it felt like that smile shined brighter because of the secrets he wasn’t afraid to share. And it’s why, even with a heavy heart, I smiled two months after the Divide Music Festival when Cudi wrote on Facebook that he had checked himself into rehab for depression and suicidal urges, inspiring a string of conversations around race, mental health, and masculinity under the Twitter hashtag, #YouGoodMan.
In his Facebook post, Cudi wrote, “It’s been difficult for me to find the words to what I’m about to share with you because I feel ashamed. Ashamed to be a leader and hero to so many while admitting I’ve been living a lie… My anxiety and depression have ruled my life for as long as I can remember…”
Deeply moved by Cudi’s letter, I contributed to the #YouGoodMan conversation:
Kid Cudi is one of the artists who gave young Black kids like myself permission to feel and be open about what we were feeling, even if that openness felt like something that could only be shared between paper and a pen. When I fell in love with writing and sharing music with my peers back in high school, I literally wanted to be Cudi. How I wrote, how I wanted my voice to come across on projects, it was all Cudi.
When I heard “Cudderisback” for the first time, I knew immediately I had to write to that beat. But I couldn’t find the instrumental, so, in Audacity’s free recording software, I ended up cutting part of Vampire Weekend’s “Ottoman” without the vocals. Then, I copy and pasted that section until I completely remade the beat. And then I rapped over it, trying to give my best Kid Cudi impression.
We’re often taught to think about our heroes as never faltering but the allure of Cudi is that he was broken enough to let the light shine through. And he always wanted to shine for his people, considering his fans among them. Closing his Facebook letter, he wrote:
“Love and light to everyone who has love for me and I am sorry if I let anyone down. I really am sorry. Ill be back, stronger, better. Reborn.”
So when Cudi’s next album, Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’, dropped a month after he checked out of rehab, most of the songs written prior to him checking himself in, we knew he had more to say. And he followed through on his promise to us—and to himself—when, in 2018, he partnered with longtime collaborator and on-and-off friend Kanye West to release the seven-song album, KIDS SEE GHOSTS, providing us with a progress report through the standout track, “Reborn.”
Cudi’s hums have become their own entity in recent years—something that artists have had Cudi sprinkle on their tracks like parsley to spruce up the presentation, like he does on Travis Scott’s “through the late night,” or a wave that artists have wanted to ride, knowing how sweet the swell is.
So nine seconds into “Reborn,” when Cudi begins humming, “I’m wide awake,” we’re immediately taken somewhere familiar, somewhere that feels like home. And then Cudi jumps into the chorus:
I’m so — I’m so reborn, I’m movin’ forward
Keep movin’ forward, keep movin’ forward
Ain’t no stress on me Lord, I’m movin’ forward
Keep movin’ forward, keep movin’ forward
It feels like I can hear Cudi smiling while reciting these words. They feel like freedom—in that he isn’t complete, but that he’s still going. It also feels like he’s trying to internalize this call to keep going through repetition. Like the more he says it, the more it’ll become true for him.
I relate with this as someone who regularly feels burdened by the bleakness of the world yet so badly wants to believe another world is possible. Abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba is known for saying, “Hope is a discipline,” which she described to The Intercept as being “more about the practice of making a decision every day, that you’re still gonna put one foot in front of the other, that you’re still going to get up in the morning. And you’re still going to struggle.”
I often forget Kanye West is on “Reborn,” which is easy to do seeing as he only has one verse on the song, but it also feels intentional—this is Cudi’s song, Cudi’s story, Cudi’s promise. In the second verse, Cudi calls back to his Facebook letter in which he wrote, “I am not at peace. I haven’t been since you’ve known me… I deserve to have peace.” On the song, he speak-raps:
I had my issues, ain’t that much I could do
Peace is somethin’ that starts with me (with me)
One of the more well-known recovery groups, Alcoholics Anonymous, identifies the first of their Twelve Steps as, “We admitted we were powerless.” Cudi came to a similar place — “ain’t that much I could do.”
As I’ve gotten older, peace is something I desire more and more. To be, to let my mind rest. In the letter, Cudi wrote, “There’s a ragin violent storm inside of my heart at all times. Idk what peace feels like. Idk how to relax.” So it feels like an exhale when Cudi continues on with the second verse:
Had so much on my mind, I didn’t know where to go
I’ve come a long way from them hauntin’ me
Had me feelin’ oh so low
Ain’t no stoppin’ you, no way
Oh, things ain’t like before
Ain’t no stoppin’ you, no way
No stress yes, I’m so blessed and —
No stress. That’s what it felt like a few years later when I watched Kid Cudi sit down with Zane Lowe to talk about his third installment of the Man On The Moon trilogy, Man On The Moon III: The Chosen. As soon as you press play on the video, it feels like his smile takes over the screen. A smile that immediately makes you smile, a smile that can’t help but bring you joy and happiness.
When Columbus, Ohio writer Hanif Abdurraqib sat down with Kid Cudi to interview him for Billboard after the release of KIDS SEE GHOSTS, he wrote:
“Scott Mescudi grins like a person who knows that his next smile isn’t promised. His often arched eyebrows slowly dissolve, and the corners of his mouth extend to the edges of his face as if there is a new freedom waiting to be discovered there. At that point, Kid Cudi, as he’s better known, is mostly teeth. Once that smile arrives, it lingers. Cudi’s smile fights to exist, and it fights to stay.”
Last year around this time, I tweeted, “I’m thankful for every opportunity we get to see Kid Cudi smile.” And it’s true. With everything Kid Cudi has been through and experienced, I’m grateful we’ve been able to have him with us for as long as we have. That he’s still with us. That his daughter, that his family, gets to see him grow older.
In that same Billboard interview, Abdurraqib asks Kid Cudi, “Has the fight gotten easier, or have you found enough joy to eclipse the idea that you’re fighting at all?” To which, Cudi replied:
“I have so much joy that I don’t feel like I’m fighting anymore.”
As someone who doesn’t have the luxury of height, standing at an honest 5'7", I often have to jostle my way to a good view at most concerts. But that night at the Divide Music Festival, before Kid Cudi had written his letter telling us how unwell he was, there was a calm that covered the crowd. Even with the jumping up and down and cheering, it felt like we were okay and we had each other.
A contract between us and Cudi that we’d keep movin’ forward. Even if we didn’t know which way to go.
