Kid Cudi on Virgil Abloh, new music and starting a fashion brand

Kid Cudi – real name Scott Mescudi – is a “really colourful, carefree and fun guy,” he tells me, as we sit in a private room on the second floor of Selfridges, surrounded by racks of punchy clothing and stacks of Haribo share bags.

The musician-cum-designer-cum-actor is dressed in a vivid look – a multicoloured varsity jacket and baggy jeans – from his new collection for Members of the Rage: the brand he shared with his fans in early 2022 and which is now stocked at the Oxford Street department store. Parts of his hair are dyed bleach blonde. Half of his teeth are concealed by a glistening pink diamond grill. A gigantic tattoo that reads “pink” is scrawled across his hand. There's an aura of positivity around him. He's smiling. Cudi is happy.

“People around me have seen a change in the way I am in the past couple of years,” Cudi says. “It's with my hair and my clothes. Everything is a little more vibrant. I've grown up and I've matured. I'm 40 next year and I feel good. I don't feel bad because I don't look my age,” he says, laughing. Cudi has famously struggled with his mental health. His 2021 self-produced documentary A Man Named Scott explored his internal struggles. He spent some time in rehab, but today he says that he's feeling better. I ask him, then, why he named his brand Members of the Rage, which to most would indicate feelings of resentment, anger and pain. “In the context of the brand and in the context of how I say it in the music, especially in my new album, I flipped it and it's not about that,” he says. Cudi is releasing his next album, Insano, in September, which he has said will be his last. “It's about doing what you want, without rules, and just being free. I don't want to say it's anarchy, but kind of walking that line. It's not in the same context as when I did my album Mr Rager in 2010 when I was using cocaine, abusing drugs and just fucking up my life. I use rage with positivity now.”

Members of the Rage went live in early 2022 with a Windows 98-inspired website. Described by Cudi on Twitter at the time as “years in the making”, the new line's first drop comprised 13 oversized T-shirts. That's since expanded. Today it is a fully-fledged line of clothing, which Cudi unveiled in its entirety at a showroom during Paris Fashion Week in January, comprising Americana jackets (like the one Cudi is wearing), graphic tees, jeans and accessories. While many would expect Cudi to follow other rappers who have started clothing lines, this is more than streetwear. Futuristic metallic bags sit next to scarlet-coloured flared trousers bedazzled with diamantés. Big faux fur coats and cobalt and crimson colour-blocked leather biker jackets give it a luxury – yet super playful – edge. It's inherently Cudi.

Cudi has never had a stylist. He doesn't want a stylist. “I go out to stores and buy clothes myself. That's what I enjoy," he tells me. Yet Cudi isn't satisfied with what's out there right now. While he buys what his contemporaries Jerry Lorenzo, Nigo and Pharrell are doing, he's finding it hard to get his technicolour identity across with what most brands are producing. “My style is evolving but the world of fashion isn't evolving,” he says, and I mention the quiet luxury trend that's sweeping across menswear right now. He isn't down. "I want to wear my own shit. To have your own brand and wear your own clothes feels amazing,” he says. “Seeing Pharrell back in the day just wearing Billionaire Boys Club kind of inspired me. He had the illest shit and looked good in it, because it was designed by him for him.” Cudi insists that he is hands-on with Members of the Rage. “I'm not like one of these other celebrities that are doing brands, where they just see designs and give them the OK. I am in tune with everything from the buttons to the zippers. I am the source of everything.”

Cudi has always been a fashion guy and so becoming a designer makes sense. When he was a teenager he “got a weekend job at Wendy's so I could buy clothes. In 1999 I was making $5.25 an hour and I was busting my ass to earn some money.” He was also hugely influenced by one of his friends, the late Virgil Abloh. “What he did with Pyrex and then Off-White was massive,” he says, explaining that while the late designer inspired him, he also intimidated him. “Virgil was superhuman, when people think they can match what he did, they can't. When I first started the line I reached out to him, and he was like ‘dude yes!’." Cudi explains that he asked him what he thought of the brand, but never wanted to be one of those guys – “I saw so many guys whispering in his ear asking for that type of advice” – who just asked Abloh to help ensure their brands reached his own audience. “When he liked the name of the brand it made me feel confident. He told me it was fire. I went to Virgil for advice with the logo and he was just like play around with the font, and then I settled on something that it is today,” he says of the Members of the Rage spaceship logo.

Another person who has thrown her support behind Cudi is one of his own heroes. “Chitose Abe at Sacai is my favourite. She's the coolest person in fashion. I met her in Tokyo last Christmas and we had dinner. There's only a few shows I'll go to and Sacai is one of those. It's an inspiration.” He remembers suddenly that, moments before she presented her Sacai collection in January, Abe made time to visit the Members of the Rage space. “She came to the showroom, she loved it, she was so supportive. It's like oh my god, Chitose came to see my clothes!”

With Members of the Rage Cudi wants to create a world that people can step into, reminding me that that world is a place of positivity and happiness now. “I want all my energy in one place,” he says. “I really see Members of the Rage being one of the top brands in the five years. That's my dream.” He will stage his first proper presentation next January, while next year he will do a catwalk show. He has his sights set on Paris. “If you do it in Paris, you're golden,” he says. “Because they're really hard on you out there. It's like, 'Oh, you do fashion and you're some rapper, sure.' And so if you've conquered Paris you can make it anywhere.” Cudi has a history with Paris Fashion Week. ”Virgil asked me to walk in his first Louis Vuitton show. It didn't feel real. It was like a dream. And that's why I was walking so god damn slowly, I was soaking it all up like I never want this to end," he laughs.

That said, Cudi won't ever be walking in his own shows. “I have some ideas and I think it will be dope. I want the clothes to do the talking. But even with the show it needs to feel like a new approach to fashion. It needs to be different.”