Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi, (born January 30, 1984) better known by his stage name Kid Cudi (pronounced Cuddy), is an American hip hop performer. He first gained major attention after the release of his debut mixtape A Kid Named Cudi.

Life and career

Kid Cudi was born in Cleveland, Ohio in the small middle class suburb of Shaker Heights. He is of African American descent with West African ancestry. His career took off after he moved to Brooklyn to pursue his music. He released his first mixtape, A Kid Named Cudi, in collaboration with New York street wear brand 10.Deep as a free download. The mixtape quickly caught the attention of Kanye West, which in turn spawned his signing to GOOD Music later that year. The mixtape had so much success that on May 18, 2009 10.Deep announced they were going be doing a rerelease of the "Up There" t-shirt and hard copies A Kid Named Cudi mixtape in their webstore on May 20, 2009 at 12:00 PM EST. Shortly after the shirt went up for sale the server crashed due to heavy traffic of fans wanting to buy the t-shirt and the mixtape.

Kid Cudi was later featured on Kanye West's 2008 album, 808s & Heartbreak, singing with West on the track "Welcome to Heartbreak", and helping with songwriting on "Heartless" and "Paranoid". "Welcome to Heartbreak" peaked at #87 on the Pop 100, and a music video for the song has been released.

He was then featured many medias suchXXL and BBC News's Sound of 2009 poll of up-and-coming acts. He has also been featured in Vibe, Complex, The Source, Rolling Stone, URB and Interview magazine.

Kid Cudi first appeared on shows in 2008, when he performed at the 2008 VMA's alongside Travis Barker and DJ AM. On February 17, 2009, Kid Cudi made his TV debut on Snoop Dogg's new MTV talk show Dogg After Dark performing "Day 'n' Nite" at the end of the show. Two days later on February 19, 2009, Cudi appeared on BET's 106 & Park with Kanye West to debut the video of "Day 'n' Nite" . On March 16, 2009 Kid Cudi performed on mtvU's 2009 Spring Break special. On March 17, 2009 Cudi appeared on "Last Call with Carson Daly" where he performed three songs. Kid Cudi also made some cameo apperance next to Solange in the vidéo for thesong "T.O.N.Y." in February 2009, and later in the Black Eyed Peas video for I Gotta Feeling, next to David Guetta.

However, despite this raising succes, Kid Cudi announced on March 16, 2009 that he would be retiring from hip-hop after the release of his first solo album and album with Chip Tha Ripper, due to all the overwhelming stress in the music industry. On March 19, 2009, Cudi confirmed that he was not going to retire on stage at Austin's SXSW 2009 festival.

Man on the Moon: The End of Day

Kid Cudi is currently finishing up his debut album Man on the Moon: The End of Day for an August 25, 2009 release on Universal Motown Records .

The album's first single is Day 'N' Nite, and is since Kid Cudi's greatest commercial sucess, the song charting well Both in the USA and in Europa. On February 25, 2009 Kid Cudi self-leaked a "teaser trailer" for the upcoming Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen film using his song "Sky Might Fall" in the background, later he posted that he made the trailer himself and now was in talks to possibly make it official. In June 2009, Kid Cudi released the single, Make Her Say (originally entitled as "I Poke Her Face"), which features a sample from Lady Gaga's song "Poker Face". Shortly after his song "Mr. Solo Dolo" leaked on to the internet.

Kid Cudi, along with Emile, produced an exclusive single called "Switchin Lanes" for the video game Midnight Club: Los Angeles, part of its "South Central Premium Upgrade" Downloadable Content (DLC) which came out March 19, 2009 for the PlayStation 3 and March 27, 2009 for the Xbox 360.

He revealed information about his future project via his blog, saying that another solo album was planned for release after the collaboration with Chip Tha Ripper and will be followed with a collaboration project with Ratatat.