Jim Jones says he’s “solely responsible for Kid Cudi’s career.” Furthermore, he believes Cudi would agree.
As fans will note, Jones and Cudi intersected on an early iteration of the latter’s breakout 2008 hit “Day ‘n’ Nite.” In a recent interview with Superstar Jay, Jones detailed how he came to be introduced to Cudi’s music, as well as revealed how his remix of the still-ubiquitous track made its way onto the airwaves.
“Kid Cudi was nobody,” Jones said when the song was brought up around 24 minutes into the video below. “He worked in the fucking store under Koch Records. I was signed to Koch Records. I didn’t even know that Kid Cudi worked down there.”
At some point, Jones was made aware of a team of video directors who had recently worked with Cudi for free. Someone who was working for Jones at the time wanted him to connect with the directors, whom he was also managing.
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“I was like, ‘Give me the record and I’ll let you shoot me a video,’” Jones recalled. “They got me the record, I did the record, they shot the video.”
As for how the track made its way to radio, Jones said it was simply a matter of ripping.
“I put it on YouTube,” he said. “Somebody at Hot 97 ripped it off of YouTube and started playing it at Hot 97.” According to Jones, once Cudi got his deal, he was taken off the record and the team behind the track’s push started to go for radio ads without him.
“It happens like that but I’m solely responsible for Kid Cudi’s career,” Jones said. “Solely. You can go tell him that, he’s gonna tell you, ‘He’s right.’”
See more below.
On Thursday, a new NFT music video for Jim Jones and Migos’ “We Set the Trends” collab is debuting via Decentraland. The new video is directed by EddieVisual and Yasha Gruben, with work from 15 visual artists featured throughout. See a preview below.