Kid Cudi, Travis Scott, Pharrell Williams Getty Images(3)
The Scotts are back — and they’re making sure to be fashionable when they arrive “At the Party.”
In a new song released on Friday, November 3, Kid Cudi and Travis Scott — a.k.a the hip-hop super duo The Scotts — teamed up with music producer, rapper and Louis Vuitton men’s creative director Pharrell Williams for a mid-autumn club banger. “At the Party” finds the hip-hop trio stylin’ and profilin’ like Ric Flair, and each participant takes a moment to drop a fashion-inspired line on the track.
“Bleed in the scene, I can achieve / What I dream, full steam on the Humboldt, always think of Virgil / I was always hit with the no-no,” raps Cudi, 39, referring to the late Virgil Abloh. The fashion designer — who founded Off-White and oversaw Louis Vuitton’s menswear — died in 2021 after a secret two-year battle with cardiac angiosarcoma, a type of cancer.
When Scott, 32, took his turn on the verse, he mentioned another iconic designer. “I was just there at the function / Had this s–t bumpin’, Vivienne Westwood with the buttons / I went no limit with the budget / P and the Cudi, had the hoes heavy on the money,” raps the father of Kylie Jenner’s two children before mentioning the fashion line Comme des Garçons. “It’s fake and the love / That’s why the rage live forever / Hot in a Comme de sweater, baby, cool me off / She gon’ get a top, yeah, you dig it?”
Both Scott and Cudi mention “four letters” in their verses. While Genius infers that this could be a reference to the acronym GOAT, or “Greatest of All Time,” the fashionable nature of the song could also mean those four letters are LVMH, for Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, the multinational company that owns Louis Vuitton, Moët & Chandon champagne and Hennessy cognac.
LVMH also employs Williams, 50, as the head of their menswear division. Being appointed to the position “has just been so mind-blowing,” Williams told Business of Fashion in October. “I’ve just been so touched by the whole thing … that someone would see me that way. But then there are certain parts within you that you know were there, but you’re just not even thinking about it in that way.”
Williams is following in Abloh’s footsteps, which is no easy feat. Abloh was the first Black American to serve as creative director of menswear for Louis Vuitton in the brand’s 150-year history. “I’m not here to fill my brother’s shoes,” remarked Williams. “My brother’s shoes are his shoes. And the steps that he took are his steps.”
Instead, he plans to forge his own path with Louis Vuitton by having the brand tell stories of Black men and women being “economically free, to be educated, to have equal access to health care, equal access to representation.”
While Williams’ last album was 2014’s Girl, he hasn’t abandoned music entirely. He appeared on a handful of tracks in 2022, including “Cash in Cash Out” with 21 Savage and Tyler, the Creator. Cudi, on the other hand, has been busy, dropping the Entergalactic project in 2022. His ninth studio album, Insano, is due in January 2024.
Scott has also been hard at work, releasing his chart-topping Utopia album in July before going on the Circus Maximus tour in mid-October. Scott and Cudi (born Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi) released “The Scotts” single in 2020, and the song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. There has been speculation that a full album by The Scotts would drop soon afterward, but so far, nothing has come.
