Genre: Auto-Bio | Published: August 2025 | Rating: Really fucking good!

I just read Kid Cudi’s self- come up story. What realness, what rawness, such honesty. Curse my years of weed dependency, it really fucked up my memory and retention skills. I almost want to re-read each chapter to do the book proper justice.

Cudi is the first book of 2026 I wanted to complete. I wanted to read this book because I always liked Cudi’s mainstream music, especially the blockbuster that is Day n Nite. I first heard it at like 7 or 8, thought it was a wavy song. Listened again with grown ears at 19, having became the lonely depressed stoner he sang about and it was such a bedroom ceiling song. When Man on the Moon III came out in 2020 I was front row. Day n Nite was something of a prototype to Cudi for me, but MOTMIII was in heavyyyy rotation. When I learned that he had a Memoir out, it instantly made it’s way to my TBR list.

I really like the therapy-couch approach of the writing. It’s frank, almost like you read life just as it unfolds. Death is dark, fun is bubbly. I feel for his losses and am happy for his triumphs. It’s how I like (and want) to write; conversational, normal with color.

I see parts of myself in Scott, a Black creative with interests that American society doesn’t expect Black men, Black youth to have. In my case it was fandoms (HP, PJO, and others), nerd shit (trivia, sci-fi, and learning interesting facts) and “white people music” (was really into Paramore, One Direction, 5SOS and Bastille-type shit). Being atypical wasn’t the only connection I felt to him, I remember feeling my first flavors of depression creep through in middle school. I would have moments of deep sadness, even when times were generally happy (as happy as a dysfunctional, DV normalized, SA sheathed Black household could get). That’s when the smiley face tests would begin. This lingering cloud only got darker as adolescence lived on.

To read him follow every inch of his dreams, not for immoralism, but to touch hearts, to feed more dreamers, was moving in many moments. He talks about experiencing being an inspirator, his relationship with the Smiths being particularly significant. There’s a profound amount of Black power in being an inspiration to Jaden, working with him, then his sister Willow, to afterwards be introduced to Will and receive words of wisdom, in that order. What unconventional impact that is. Throughout the later half of the book I learned a deeper understanding of his entire MO, that flavor of unconventional impact, aspiration-over-aesthetic trajectory. Letting his creativity steer his career all throughout, even during his recovery.

Saddening to read him experience his drug abuse issues, deeply empowering to read him overcome them in the way that he has. He revisits the moment when he was reintroduced to what got him there and it shook me to my core. “Come get this shit bro”

I took many lessons from this read;

You truly never know who you’ll reach in this lifetime. Who’s flame you fan, who’s struggle you put a light on, who’s success you may help bolster. It’s so important to do what you feel called to, act even it it scares you.

Loosing yourself can be as deadly as suicide. When you abandon yourself, what you stand for, what brings you joy, you end up a shell of a human. I’m not just talking about deterring from your passions or goals, people pleasing through life. I'm not talking about letting yourself go for a period as you experience particularly jarring life events. Not talking about shedding what you no longer identify with. To completely forego everything that made you who you are today, the colors that shine in the core of your being, leaves you as soulless as death. It invites some of the worst parts of the human experience; severe addition, no loving connections to keep as a safety net, no light to walk through the darkness. Making it out and returning to yourself is the rebirth you deserve.

Always remember to reach back to who and what built you up. Doesn’t have to be blood relatives, ex lovers, or fallen-out ex friends. Doesn’t have to be your hometown, your old school, church, neighborhood. Chosen family, environments of uplifting love, spaces that registered as home form day 1, that one person who always saw something in you. Pouring back into them when you’re in the space to is what humanity is all about. It’s what makes us unique, alive, continuous. I fully believe you receive what you put into the universe ten-fold.

I encourage anyone experiencing a rebirth, anyone lost, anyone facing their ugly, anyone scared to take whatever leap ahead of them, to read this truly immortalizing work.