Rapper Kid Cudi joined a long tradition of men wearing dresses in his appearance on SNL earlier this year. He explained that the inspiration for his outfit came from an unlikely source; Kurt Cobain.
Kid Cudi planned to wear a dress years ago.
Kid Cudi explained where he got the idea to wear his dress in a conversation with HBO’s The Shop: Uninterrupted. He said, “The image of seeing Kurt Cobain in a dress was very rock-‘n’-roll to me.”
He is talking about the lead singer of Nirvana, Kurt Cobian, who passed in 1994. Cobain was known for wearing dresses. The particularly famous instance Kid Cudi referenced in his SNL appearance is Cobain’s 1993 cover of The Face.
He continued explaining, going into detail about how long he’s wanted to do this for. He said, “That was cool. So I already made my mind up years ago that I wanted to do this. And it’s cool because I’m also giving confidence to the kids and telling them to be themselves and do what they want to do.”Â
Kid Cudi received more than a little backlash for his decision, but rather than panic, he tried to understand his detractors. He’s “more like, ‘Hmm, I wonder why they feel that way.'”
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Kid Cudi is good at not letting the controversy get to him.
He explained how he can be so level headed about the comments, saying, “I’ve never been someone who’s, like, thinking about the backlash. I don’t give a f*ck about what anyone thinks.”
He also walked into wearing his dress knowing the controversy it would cause. He knew he would have to not care about what others said, as “You can’t when you’re doing this sh*t. I knew it would p*ss some people off, but I love that. Because hip-hop is so weird about sh*t.”
He explained that the backlash generally involved whether he was trying to attack masculinity, saying “I’ve already seen people making YouTube videos where they’re just strictly talking about me and this dress. Like grown men, angry, grown Black men, angry. ‘He’s doing something against men and masculinity, it’s a big thing going on.'”
But, Kid Cudi doesn’t let it affect him at all, explaining “And I just be like, ‘Yo, this is so funny, this is crazy that I’ve stirred it up like this.'”
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