Key Takeaways:
- Kid Cudi says Kanye West's “vile” comments about Virgil Abloh were the final straw in their friendship.
- Despite past reconciliation attempts, Cudi says West broke his heart “over and over.”
- He reflects on the creative freedom they once shared, saying it will never happen again.
Kid Cudi says he’s done trying to fix things with Kanye West. Speaking with “CBS Mornings” on Wednesday (Aug. 13), the “Day ‘N’ Nite (nightmare)” artist opened up about why he walked away from their friendship for good after the Chicago rapper’s “vile” comments about Virgil Abloh.
“It’s a sad thing,” Cudi said when asked about their falling out. When CBS News' Anthony Mason pressed him on how, he explained, “The freedom that we experienced when we were creating, it just will never happen ever again. That is the heartbreaking side of things.” It’s a sentiment we’ve heard from several of Ye’s former collaborators, most recently from Pusha T.
“I had a lot of things in my life break my heart, and I’ve been able to survive and move past it,” he continued. “I think [West] has [broken mine] over and over, multiple times.” Despite a handful of reconciliation attempts over the years, the KIDS SEE GHOSTS collaborators couldn’t make it stick for better or worse.
“We’ve tried since then, but we always have a falling out,” Cudi admitted. He then pointed specifically to Ye’s remarks about Abloh, who died in 2021 after a two-year battle with cardiac angiosarcoma. “He said some things that there’s just no coming back from. The comments that he’s had about Virgil Abloh are just some of the most evil, vile, disturbing, f**ked up things I’ve heard.”
Cudi was presumably referring to Ye’s “f**k Virgil” tweet from February, which he posted amid a spree of anti-Semitic rants. In that very same post, the “Flashing Lights” rapper also called out “any of these other n**gas that worked for me, [then] used me, then went against me.”
According to Cudi, it was the final straw. “Every time he took a dig at Virgil, it just made me super angry,” he explained. “Virgil was an angel to everyone. There’s no coming back from that, man. Like, I’m done with you, and it breaks my heart because I loved Kanye.”