Kid Cudi Is Dreaming Past The Moon Nearly 15 Years Later: ‘Everything Is Possible’

Kid Cudi was a dreamer in 2008, a wide-eyed 20-something looking to escape the abyss that was Cleveland, Ohio. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Cudi escaped the Midwest’s bottomless chasm to become one of the genre’s most decorated MCs. Cudi, born Scott Mescudi, has reached a new level of mastery in his life as he prepares to release his tenth studio album, Entergalatic.

Cudi blossomed into a seasoned actor along his storied rap journey. Cudi discovered a second calling in acting after a riveting performance as the beloved character Domingo Dean on HBO’s TV series How to Make It in America in 2010. When he wasn’t delivering soul-stirring anthems like “Soundtrack to My Life,” “Solo Dolo,” or “Erase Me,” Cudi was burying his head in scripts and expanding his knowledge to become a film buff. Years later, after a successful string of films, including this year’s horror gems Pearl and the even more chilling X, the results prove to be gold. The former, co-produced by Cudi’s Mad Solar, LeBron James’ BRON Creative, and A24, received positive reviews, particularly from legendary director Martin Scorsese, who directed films such as Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, and others.

“I was enthralled, then disturbed, then so unsettled that I couldn’t sleep.” In an interview with Slashfilm, Scorsese said of the gory film, “But I couldn’t stop watching.”

With his confidence at an all-time high, Cudder hopes to dazzle music and film fans with his upcoming Netflix show Entergalatic, which will be released alongside his 10th studio album next Friday (Sept. 30). The animated series is based on Cudi’s latest studio effort and follows Jabari, a young bachelor who is trying to balance his career and love life.

“I’m grateful to be here, man,” the accomplished polymath says. “I’m grateful to be doing it at all. I’m fortunate. Fourteen years is a long time to work on something. I never imagined I’d be doing this after all these years. It’s an insane sensation.”

Cudi spoke with Billboard about his Entergalatic album, how it relates to his upcoming Netflix show, sending flowers to Emmy winners Quinton Brunson and Sheryl Lee Ralph, and how he keeps the devil away from his blessings.

You added a visual component to the album with Entergalactic. Please explain why you thought a show would complement the music.

I’ve always wanted to do something visual to accompany an album, but it seems like everyone has done it. I just wanted to come up with a new approach that hadn’t been tried before. The procedure was extremely simple in this case. “Okay, it’s best if I make the music first and then we go in and write the scripts,” I said, masterminding the whole thing.

So I basically wrote the story in my head and created the album first. I’m talking about figuring out different beats in the story, and I knew I needed a song that conveyed how [the main character Jabari] felt the first time he saw Meadow. I needed a song that captured their feelings and emotions the first time they fell in love. I needed a song that explained and touched on them losing each other. Will they ever rekindle their relationship?

I was just thinking about all of this while writing the album and putting it all together. From there, I simply sat with my writers while they downloaded all of the information and we were able to piece together the scripts.

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