Kid Cudi paid tribute to Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Saturday Night Live great Chris Farley during his musical guest debut on the long-running NBC sketch comedy show.
During the April 10 episode hosted by actress Carey Mulligan, the 37-year-old rapper — born Scott Mescudi — performed two tracks from his 2020 album, Man on the Moon III: The Chosen, while paying his respects to the fallen legends.
For his first performance of “Tequila Shots,” Cudi stepped onto the stage wearing a fuzzy olive-green cardigan similar to the one Cobain famously wore during Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York live performance, which aired months before his death in 1994. Underneath, he rocked a white shirt emblazoned with a headshot of the boisterous actor-comedian Farley, who was an SNL cast member in the 1990s. Farley died at age 33 in December 1997.
During his second song “Sad People,” Cudi took his Cobain homage to another level by appearing in a spaghetti-strap floral-print dress similar to ones donned by the late Nirvana frontman during the grunge band’s heyday in the ’90s. The tribute arrived days after the 27th anniversary of Cobain’s death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in April 1994.
This marked Cudi’s first time as musical guest on SNL. He previously made a cameo on the show during Kanye West’s star-studded run through Ye’s song “Ghost Town” in 2018.
Cudi’s latest album, Man on the Moon III: The Chosen, landed the rapper his fifth top 10 album on the Billboard 200 in December 2020.
Watch the rapper’s SNL performances below.
