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Kid Cudi says he’s adjusted his use of marijuana in recent months, which has played a role in his acting performances
The multi-platinum rapper tells PEOPLE that, at one point, he was smoking 15 blunts a day before re-examining that relationship in rehab last year
“I’m just more interested in being sober a lot more and being more present,” he says
Kid Cudi is detailing how he changed his relationship with weed.
The multi-hyphenate, 41, tells PEOPLE that following the events of revelatory new book, Cudi: The Memoir — in which he opens up about experiences with love, loss, addiction and rehabilitation over the course of his trend-setting career — he went to rehab again in November to adjust his marijuana usage.
Cudi even quit smoking entirely for a few weeks, he says. “I just was in this place where I was abusing it,” the musician, born Scott Mescudi, says. “I was really abusing it. I was smoking maybe 15 blunts a day, wake up in the mornings, get high. It truly ruled my life.”
His time away from smoking weed lasted two months, Cudi adds, before he realized he wanted to “start again” — without him ever getting to “how I was before.”
“And now I just get after it at night or on the weekends when I have the free time and I’m just relaxing, but I’m not smoking nowhere near as much weed as I was smoking before,” the multi-platinum rapper says. “A joint lasts me all day, damn near. So my relationship has changed with that in a major way. And I’m just more interested in being sober a lot more and being more present.”
Simon & Schuster
Cudi: The Memoir
Cudi, who once rapped of a “lonely stoner” on his 2008 breakthrough single “Day ‘n’ Nite,” has seen some positive changes in his life since re-examining his relationship with marijuana. Specifically, it’s shown in his acting.
The How to Make It in America and Don’t Look Up star, who most recently secured a cameo in Happy Gilmore 2, said that he’d been “blitzed out of my mind” in many of his past on-screen appearances. But now, he’s noticed a change while being “completely sober” on set of a new film over the summer.
“Granted, it’s not like it hinders me in any type of way because I was smoking so much that I wasn’t really getting high. So people have seen me act for years and they love my acting. They love the stuff I’ve done, but it’s just something different when you’re on set and you’re sober and you can feel the emotions,” Cudi says. “Because in this movie, I cried a handful of times and it was easy to get there because I was sober.”
“There’s no way I could have done this if I was high as s—.”
Republic
Kid Cudi’s Free
Cudi’s new memoir — which arrives alongside his 11th studio album Free and has since become a New York Times Best Seller — details the rapper’s early life in Cleveland, meteoric rise to stardom in the late ’00s, groundbreaking collaborations and life now as a loving father and husband who continues to build upon his legacy of vulnerability in hip-hop, fashion and beyond.
“I hope it gives [fans] some hope that you do come out on the other side and into the light and God puts us through things because he wants to teach us something,” Cudi says of the book. “It’s always a lesson in there, always. Even if it doesn’t seem like it could be possible, because in the moment, everything just seems like all is lost, you know what I mean? But if you really think about it, everything happens for a reason.”
Cudi: The Memoir is out now via Simon & Schuster and Free is now available via Wicked Awesome and Republic Records.
For more on Kid Cudi, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.
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