Kid Cudi Talks Near Fatal Overdose In Memoir Excerpt
Kid Cudi Talks Near Fatal Overdose & Suicidal Thoughts In Memoir Excerpt
The face of modern, emo sing-songy rap was Kid Cudi. And with his memoir dropping soon, he is ready to get even deeper.
The Cleveland, Ohio rapper has never shied away from rapping about depressive states and drug use, and in a new excerpt from his book given to GQ, he explained how the mix of the two almost led to him taking his own life.
He said the moment came about a year after his debut album, Man On The Moon, dropped— around 2010. He was struggling with the newfound fame and where to musically go next.
He remembers being high on cocaine while staying in his New York City apartment, and his legs failed him, and “Eventually, I gave in and just laid on the ground. My heart was racing. It felt like it was going to burst any minute.”
Cudi says the fame was weighing on him and troubled kids were looking up to him and called him their savior, while he has no guiding light of his own.
He adds, “It was peace I was after. Here, crippled on the floor, minutes from overdosing, was the closest I’d ever come to finding it.”
After passing out, he describes waking up and assuming he’d entered the afterlife and had his Vanilla Sky moment.
“My eyes closed, and the feeling of a warm blanket descended on me. I awoke bathed in light. This must be heaven,” he thought.
But eventually, he woke up in that Tribeca apartment near the West Side Highway, feeling disappointed.
“I hadn’t fulfilled my death wish,” he added.
The “Day ‘n’ Nite” rapper goes into detail about his cocaine use, admitting it was a hobby at first but soon became all-consuming as he began sniffing more.
“I’d make lines that were as wide as my pinky and do them back-to-back throughout the day, every day,” Cudi writes. “When I would get after it, I would really get after it. I was a maniac.”
Cudi fans will remember that he followed up his debut album with a sequel, Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager, which was even darker than the original with song titles like Marijuana, and “Wild’n Cuz I’m Young,” “Trapped in My Mind,” and his aforementioned “maniac” behavior. Cudi now confirms that the project was drug-fueled.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I didn’t have something to push me,” he added.
He’d addressed his substance abuse problem at age 32 and entered rehab. Despite trying to leave the program three times, he finally stuck it out, and in a 2023 tweet, he said he’d stopped drinking and was seriously considering giving up weed.
Cudi: The Memoir releases in stores and online August 12.
