Next month, Kid Cudi will launch one of his biggest projects to date: an album and animated Netflix series, both entitled Entergalactic. To start the hype train around the new project, Cudi sat down with Esquire for a fascinating interview that covered the new material, past addictions, and even a stroke that Cudi suffered while being treated in 2016.
Inevitably, there was also plenty of talk about Ye. Cudi and Kanye West had a public falling out around the release of Donda close to a year ago, with West reportedly breaking off the friendship due to Cudi’s friendship with Pete Davidson, the then-partner of West’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian. At the time, Cudi responded on social media by saying, “I am not cool w[ith] that man. He’s not my friend.”
In the new interview, Cudi expands upon the betrayal that he felt when West turned on him. “Do you know how it feels to wake up one day, look at your social media, and you’re trending because somebody’s talking some shit about you?” he asks. “And then you got this person’s trolls sending you messages on Instagram and Twitter? All in your comments? That shit pissed me off. That he had the power to fuck with me that week. That he used his power to fuck with me. That pissed me off… You fucking with my mental health now, bro.”
“I’m at a place in my life where I have zero tolerance for the wrong energies,” Cudi explained. “I’ve watched so many people throughout the years that are close to him be burned by him doing some fucked-up shit. And then they turn around and forgive him. And there’s no repercussions. You’re back cool with this man. He does it over and over.”
Cudi added that West’s immaturity led him to sever the friendship for good. “I’m not one of your kids. I’m not Kim. It don’t matter if I’m friends with Pete or not friends with Pete. None of this shit had anything to do with me,” Cudi said. “If you can’t be a grown man and deal with the fact that you lost your woman? That’s not my fucking problem. You need to own up to your shit like every man in this life has. I’ve lost women, too. And I’ve had to own up to it. I don’t need that in my life. I don’t need it.”
Cudi also wished to set the record straight when it came to the perception that West helped give Cudi his career in music. “I just want to clear that up for anybody that feels like Kanye made my career or made me who I am. He brought me on to do 808s [And Heartbreak]. I thought that was really fucking awesome. I wanted to be a part of a family and saw G.O.O.D. Music as that opportunity. So I finally said yeah. Kanye West did not come and pluck me out of Applebee’s or the Bape store.”
“The twisted thing is that I love him, but I love you so much that I can kick you the fuck out of my life and be done with your ass,” Cudi concluded. “’Cause you are not good for me. I love myself more. I love myself more. I didn’t love myself all them years you knew me. I love myself more now, bro. I love myself way more.”
