Rappers Behaving Like Rock Stars Behaving Badly

posted in: Music News • Rock • Urban

At this point you’ve probably heard something about Scott Mescudi’s (aka rapper Kid Cudi) upcoming sideproject WZRD, his “rock” collaboration with producer Dot Da Genius. Cudi’s been hyping the release for a few months now and there have been a few scraps and snippets leaked from the new record, like the edited chunk of “Teleport 2 Me” that Cudi shared with fans through  Twitter.

It might not exactly be “punk rock” as Mescudi himself refers to it, but it’s still recognizably a product of the same mind that brought the world “Day ‘n’ Nite”, “Pursuit of Happiness” and “Marijuana”. Since the music is Cudi’s first material since 2010, fans and Kid Cudi himself are pretty excited. So it was a pretty big deal when Cudi was scheduled to perform some of his unreleased WZRD material at the Heatwave Music Festival in Melbourne, Australia. Now, what happens then when a star of Kid Cudi’s standing gets his set cut short? Well, he tears the stage up a bit in rock star fashion, of course.

Though his band dutifully keeps playing after his departure in the video, shortly after Cudi leaves the stage, the venue goes dark and the show is over, much to the dismay of the kids in attendance. Alright, he didn’t quite trash the stage as much as turn over a few lights, but still! Cudi would later take to his tumblr to defend his actions, stating that, “If my set is EVER cut short at any show, im trashing the stage. Not out of anger, it takes a lot to get me furious nowadays, but out of principle. The fans always deserve a full set at all shows, especially when they spend their hard earned money on expensive tickets.” It’s hard to argue with his line of thinking, considering the astronomic prices of a lot of music festival tickets.

While the reason for Cudi’s set being cut short was never really made clear, there are often legitimate reasons behind these decisions. Kanye West experienced something similiar early last week when  weather issues and technical malfunctions pushed back the start of his set by forty-five minutes. Since West was the co-headliner for that weekend of the festival, the fans and some of the other artists on the bill weren’t too pleased with how things played out. While chants from the crowd of “bullshit” are bad enough, how does that compare to the ire of Soundgardern frontman Chris Cornell? “Sounds like there’s children playing music there, retarded children, retarded as in held back. There’s no other word for it,” Cornell said, seemingly in reference to West soundcheck going on during Soundgarden’s set. But, a few hours later Cornell took to Twitter to clarify his comments. “Kanye had nothing to do with it! We love him,” Cornell tweeted, stating that his anger was directed at the festival promoters and not the rapper. All of this without comment from the usually outspoken Kanye West.

Of course, Cudder isn’t the only rapper to be tearing stuff apart on stage lately. Odd Future ringleader Tyler, the Creator is no stranger to controversy and mayhem, but he seemed to land himself in some hot water when he was arrested after a show at the Roxy in Los Angeles on charges of vandalism. Video soon surfaced of the young rapper arguing with the sound guy and subsequently thrashing some recording equipment and microphones.

Tyler was bailed out soon afterwards, and like Cudi, made a pretty compelling argument for his reaction. While trying to assist two female attendees who had gotten hurt in the crowd Tyler approached both security and the sound engineer to try to alert the venue to the situation. When neither took any action, Tyler subsequently lost his patience, hence, the “vandalism”. Tyler would go onto say that after spending time in jail he, “didn’t understand why rappers talk about jail like it’s cool.” So if there’s anything to gain from these rapper’s episodes, it’s this: it’s okay to start a little bit of ruckus, just as long as you don’t get yourself arrested. That’s just no fun.