“Drake & Josh” was certainly a children’s show, but one famous rapper apparently loved it.
Former cast members of the Nickelodeon series reunited Sunday for a panel discussion at the Anaheim Convention Center, where one of the titular stars, Josh Peck, said rapper Kid Cudi was “a massive fan” — and recalled learning that when he bumped into him at a club.
“Kid Cudi was a big fan of ‘Drake & Josh,’” Peck said during the Nostalgia Con panel, per People. “Which I didn’t know. But I was in some club … and I see a buddy, [actor] Bryan Greenberg, he’s on a show with Kid Cudi. I’m a massive fan. He was like, ‘Yo, let me introduce you. He’s great.’”
Peck recalled trying to dissuade his friend from making the introduction, which must have occurred in the late 2000s or early 2010s, as Greenberg and Cudi — whose real name is Scott Mescudi — co-starred on HBO’s “How to Make It in America” from 2010 to 2011.
“So I’m walking up to him and he goes, ‘AAAAAA, I love “Drake & Josh,”’” Peck recalled Sunday. “I’m like, ‘I love you Kid Cudi.’ And he’s like, ‘Call me Scott.’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t want to.’ So he’s like, ‘Yo, take my number down, we should talk.’”
“[I] was like, cool, if this bubble comes up green tomorrow, I won’t be hurt,” he added.
Peck is still best known as the lively teen on “Drake & Josh,” which began its run in 2004, when Cudi would have been 20 years old.
But Peck is also a lifelong hip-hop fan whose encounter with Cudi naturally left him in disbelief. Peck recalled steeling himself against the chance of never speaking to him again, but was quickly proved wrong.
“The next day he texts me like, ‘Yo, what’s good. Whatcha doing?’” Peck recalled Sunday, per People. “He’s like, ‘Oh, I’m about to go shopping on Rodeo Drive.’ I’m like, ‘Cool, I’m playing Xbox in my friend’s basement. So, samesies.’”
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Peck said he was eventually invited over to listen to his album “and talk about ‘Drake & Josh’ for three hours.” While Cudi obsessives will surely try to decipher which LP, exactly, the rapper played for him, Peck is still stunned that he got to befriend the rapper in the first place.
“It makes no sense,” he reportedly said onstage Sunday.
Peck has long publicly spoken about his love of hip-hop and famously starred opposite Wu-Tang Clan rapper Method Man in the critically acclaimed, criminally underseen 2008 drama “The Wackness” — a bona fide love letter to the boom-bap era of the 1990s.
“I love hip-hop music,” Peck told Ion Cinema in 2008. “I think it’s ingrained in you. And it’s music of my generation. It’s poetry set to a beat. … Now I don’t really get into the generic rap music, talking about pimps and hos and bling and what not.”
“But, I feel like if you don’t like old school hip-hop, you’re not a hip-hop fan to me,” he added.
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