Kid Cudi Speaks About his Recent Media Exposure

With his debut album, Man on the Moon: The End of Day officially hitting stores today, XXLMag.com caught up with Kid Cudi earlier today (September15) to talk about his recent media exposure.

Over the past couple of days, the XXL Freshman alumnus has showed up onstage alongside Jay-Z at the rap superstar’s 9-11 benefit show, as a musical guest on Late Night with David Letterman and performed at the MTV Video Music Awards.

XXL asked the Cleveland rookie how he feels these looks are gonna help his album. “I think it's gonna make a lot of people more aware,” he said. “I think it's gonna make a lot of people a lot more interested because in these last couple of days like you said, each of those moments has been different demographics, the Jay-Z was definitely a hip-hop show, and later on seeing me on David Letterman, which is a very mainstream show, you know you don’t see a lot of hip-hop artists on a Letterman type show, so each thing I did was very monumental."

“I think it raises eyebrows,” he added, “like ‘Wow he can do a hip-hop show at Madison Square Garden with Jay-Z and do a hook, and turn that back around and do a performance on Letterman,’ it just has people more curious about what I have to bring to the table, just off the strength of the songs and the collabs and the versatility."

Cudi faces competition from several new rap releases this week. New discs by Drake, Lil Boosie, Q-Tip, Trick Daddy, New Boyz, M.O.P., N.O.R.E., Capone, KRS-One and Buckshot have also all hit shelves today. Stay tuned to XXLMag.com as the official sales figures from all the new CDs are reported next Wednesday. –Max G with reporting by Carl Chery