What do you do when you cannot beat the allegations? You lean into them. For years, multihyphenate musician Kid Cudi has been compared to neo-expressionist legend Jean-Michel Basquiat, simply because some people think they share a face. This week, Cudi announced via Instagram that he would step into the role of the artist in the new biopic, Jean. He also wrote the script and is set to direct the movie — one he describes as, “a love letter to Jean, the 80s and New York City” — when filming begins in 2027. 

“For years people have asked me about playing Jean-Michel Basquiat in a film. But no project actually came to be. This year, I finally said fuck it, ima write it myself,” Cudi wrote. “To write a film about someone who existed was a challenge, but it was a welcomed one … Jean has inspired me all throughout my career, and it will be the biggest honor to tell his story in a way we haven't seen before.” 

Kid Cudi

As he mentioned, Cudi’s ties to Basquiat are more than skin deep. The musician and the painter both have a history of translating emotional upheaval into art. Throughout his career, Cudi has drawn ample artistic inspiration from Basquiat’s catalog, both directly and indirectly. In 2020, when Cudi returned after an almost four-year hiatus with “Leader of the Delinquents,” he paired the track with a limited-edition graphic T-shirt designed in collaboration with Virgil Abloh.

Dubbed the “PULLING STRINGS” shirt, the tee draws heavily from Basquiat’s visual vocabulary. It features a rendering of Cudi as a puppeteer, pulling the strings on a marionette of himself flipping the bird, with “Leader of the Delinquents” etched in Basquiat-style lettering on the back. 

Cudi was referencing the artist as early as 2010. The track “Ghost,” off his album Man on the Moon 2, is a sad song disguised as a happy one — an optimistic-sounding beat with lyrics that describe Cudi coming to terms with his demons and vices by quite literally agreeing to coexist with them. To this day, “Ghost” remains one of the most influential cuts in Cudi’s discography, yet the track has never had a visual component.

Kid Cudi

Instead, a video by Harlem-based director Steven Othello became the song’s unofficial music video. Othello emulates Basquiat's first feature film, Downtown 81, in the video’s aesthetic composition. While watching the film, “I realized that Cudi looked a lot like Basquiat,” Othello explained in his personal portfolio at the time. “I thought it would be cool to see him play the role of Kid Cudi while his music told the story of Basquiat.”

Cudi himself is now venturing into the world of visual art; his first solo art exhibition, under his “Scotty Ramon” alias, opened in Paris earlier this year. Which makes it the perfect time for Cudi to formally channel his inner rebellious painter for the big screen.

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