Steve Aoki feat Kid Cudi and Travis Barker - Cudi the Kid

What this video is

Released in April 2012, 'Cudi the Kid' arrived at the inflection point of EDM's mainstream breakthrough in North America. Steve Aoki's debut album Wonderland, released January 2012 on Ultra Records and Dim Mak, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album in 2013, reflecting the genre's new institutional legitimacy. The track itself exemplifies the era's cross-genre collision strategy — pairing…

Why it matters

A key artifact of the 2011–2013 EDM-hip-hop-rock crossover moment, 'Cudi the Kid' exemplifies the festival-DJ album format that brought electronic artists into mainstream pop charts and Grammy contention. The video's fast-cut surrealism and hybrid iconography established a visual grammar for EDM x…

The director

Jam Sutton is a music video director and VFX artist whose confirmed directorial credits include Steve Aoki's 'Cudi the Kid' (2012) and Azealia Banks' 'Yung Rapunxel' (2013), per IMVDb. Sutton also served as editor and post/VFX supervisor on 'Cudi the Kid',…