Multifaceted Artist Kid Cudi Opens Up About Psychedelics, Rehab, Fashion Brand Launch & Being An OG

The list of American superstar musicians coming out on their psychedelics keeps mounting. Following Wiz Khalifa’s MLB opening pitch on magic mushrooms, the twice Grammy award-winner Kid Cudi told Evening Standard’s Joe Bromley about life after rehab, his relationship with psychedelics and re-encountering his creativity.

In addition to his singing, rapping, music production, the Emmy-nominated TV creator also recently ventured into fashion. 

“I’ve been doing music for so long, it’s been 15 years being Kid Cudi which is a long time to be doing any one thing. I’m curious to see what else I can accomplish,” he told Bromley.

He sees fashion today as “very boring,” clothes being repetitive and mundane, and aims to do the same he did in music, in this industry. “There’s a void, and I can fill that void with my voice.”

His brand, Members of the Rage (MOTR) was born in 2021 during a two-week Covid quarantine in New Zealand and has now disembarked in Europe and UK’s top department store Selfridges.

The idea first came in 2016, the same year Cudi reached out for help and went to rehab, and after “many years” spent stifling and sabotaging himself and his creativity.

“It was hard, especially the process of rehab. I tried to leave three times, and they talked me down each time,” he says. “Facing my bulls***, answering to my own drama and my own flaws, nobody likes to do that. It’s tough. But I had to go through it: no pain, no gain. I came out of that wanting to be better, more than I ever have in my life.”

MOTR was initially a film idea (and still is) that sees a group of outcast children band together to stop an alien invasion, beings Cudi has always believed exist. Indeed, a recurring MOTR motif is a UFO sucking up earth.  

To Bromley’s observation of some “psychedelia” reminiscence present in the clothing line, Cudi nodded. “Well, everybody knows I’m super into psychedelics. I have been for several years. Anything between DMT or acid or shrooms. You know, all of it… but not all at once.”

Cudi believes that at some point in each individual’s life, people should do psychedelics. “I feel like you have to massage the mind. Let it know that there are other things beyond what you see. To feel the beyond, to feel pure joy.”

He acknowledges his clothes are not for everyone, but “for people that totally live outside of the box.” Cudi’s been frowned upon by trolls questioning his masculinity, but he’s decided to transcend any of those comments. 

“I feel like I have a duty, as a black straight man in the world. I’m nearly 40 years old, I’m an OG now. My voice is strong,” he told Bromley. “When I sit on a tweet, and I say, ‘Yo, if you’re homophobic and you have a problem with gay and trans rights, get off my feed, unfollow me,’ that s*** goes a long way.”

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Photo Courtesy of Theo Wargo/WireImage/Getty Images.