Kid Cudi hasn’t been shy about his dependency on drugs or suicidal thoughts at various stages of his life in his music. His vulnerabilities endeared him to millions across the globe, helping fans who had similar experiences feel less alone.
The Cleveland rapper completely takes the mask off and pulls back the curtain on his life in his upcoming Cudi the Memoir, which will be released on Aug. 12. GQ shared a harrowing excerpt of the book, which found Cudi reflecting on his darkest hours and a near-fatal drug overdose while working on Man on the Moon II circa 2010.
“I was at peace with dying,” Cudi wrote. “After doing more coke than I ever had in my life I was losing all sense of what was real. I’d been alone in my New York apartment, crying for hours, listening to the Lykke Li song ‘Time Flies’ on repeat. It was a love song, but the melodies and her voice filled me with despair.”
He continued in the excerpt: “I tried to get up off the bed, but my legs wouldn’t work, so I collapsed to the floor and started to crawl. Eventually, I gave in and just laid on the ground. My heart was racing. It felt like it was going to burst any minute.
While Cudi’s music can be the medicine of choice for fans, he was the one ultimately looking for a life raft.
“I was a role model, but I didn’t feel like one. People called me their savior. But who was going to save me? I was a lighthouse for others, but I couldn’t find my own way,” he added. “It was peace I was after. Here, crippled on the floor, minutes from overdosing, was the closest I’d ever come to finding it. ‘You made great music that people loved,’ I thought, ‘but this is the end.’”
Elsewhere in the excerpt, Kid Cudi took fans back to sessions for 2015’s Speedin’ Bullet to Heaven, when he had been “plotting” to die by suicide.
“After we’d finished a session, I’d be alone Googling exit bags. I was thinking about a way I could actually do it. I was plotting it,” he admitted. “There’s a song at the end of Speedin’ Bullet where I say goodbye, and that was meant to be my final album. I was going to kill myself at the end of that album, or before it came out, or during that cycle. I was not planning to live that year. Not many people around me expected me to either.”
Cudi’s memoir arrives on Aug. 12, and then 10 days later, the multi-hyphenate entertainer will release his 12th studio album, Free, on Aug. 22.
If you or anyone you know is in crisis, call 988 or visit the website for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which offers free, confidential support 24/7. Those in need of confidential support for mental health or substance abuse issues can reach out to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
