Kid CudiPhoto: Mike Coppola (Getty Images)
This weekend’s Rolling Loud music festival got off to a, shall we say, dramatic start last night after rapper Kid Cudi walked off stage midway through his headlining set after audience members pelted him with water bottles. According to Rolling Stone, it appears that Cudi got hit in the face with at least one bottle, and when he very sensibly threatened to stop the show if he “got hit with one more fucking thing,” he was met with another thrown object — at which point he dropped the mic and left.
The elephant-who-turned-to-be-actually-in-the-room here is, of course, Kanye West, whose headlining spot Kid Cudi took over after West dropped out of the festival last week, and whose names crowd members started chanting , after Cudi left. Which West was probably about to hear, as it turns out he did appear at Rolling Loud, doing a guest set with Little Durk, in which he performed a Life Of Pablo track that Cudi famously had lines for.
West’s drama with Rolling Loud — and his maneuver here, which allowed him to put a middle finger on the festival itself while still reaping the plaudits of the crowd — is just standard part of Ye’s playbook at this point; also check out his Coachella treatment earlier this year. Things seem more personal with Cudi; West and his former collaborator fell out earlier this year over Kid Cudi’s friendship with Pete Davidson, who has spent much of the past year as the latest sun in West’s ever-present constellation of grievances. It’s never clear when talking about West how much of his actions are premeditated malice — as opposed to a simple penchant for improvisational banter — but it’s not hard to see last night’s Rolling Loud as an example where he gets pretty much everything, which he wants sought after, in the most chaotic way possible.
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