Fans can’t get enough of Young Nudy and Playboi Carti’s still-unreleased viral track “Kid Cudi” (aka “Pissy Pamper”), and they’re going the extra mile to hear it. A version of Carti’s verse on the track, that has had its pitch altered, was uploaded under the title “Kid Carti” by an artist named Lil Kambo, and currently sits at No. 1 on Spotify’s United States Viral 50 chart. The unofficial upload boasts more than two million streams already, further demonstrating the unquenchable appetite fans seem to have, for a song that has yet to be released officially.
Reached by Genius via email, Kambo revealed themselves to be a high school sophomore who uploaded the track for fun. “I first made my Spotify account to post songs that aren’t already on Spotify,” Kambo explained. “Before the song came out there was a snippet on YouTube and it sounded like it would be a hit if it was released. A couple weeks later the song got leaked and I posted it to my channel not thinking about how big it would get. I posted it on the Playboi Carti reddit to help the fans find the song.”
Screenshot via Spotify
Although audience response to the track was mostly quiet at first, streams picked up after the song started appearing in Instagram memes and it really jumped following Carti’s performance at Rolling Loud. “That is when I hit No. 1 on the US viral charts,” Kambo recalled. The track now has 2.3 million streams and counting. Kambo said they haven’t made any money off the song yet, but that “it is very exciting to see something I did for fun get so popular.”
Carti’s “Kid Cudi” verse first emerged online back in March, as a preview on Instagram Live. Since then, a full version of the song, revealed to be a Young Nudy and Pi'erre Bourne track titled “Pissy Pamper,” has also surfaced. After Carti performed the song at Coachella and Rolling Loud, several unofficial uploads on YouTube separately started garnering millions of streams. It continues to inspire a stream of memes, including a recent video featuring Carti depicted as an infant rapping his verse:
Despite the track's obvious and widespread popularity, it still, for unknown reasons, remains unreleased. It samples a song from the 80s, by Japanese singer Mai Yamane, “Tasogare,” who is perhaps best known to US audiences for her work on the Adult Swim series Cowboy Bebop. This makes it viable to assume that sample clearance issues stopped it from appearing on Young Nudy’s recent project, Sli'merre - although it could also be dropped as part of Carti’s upcoming Whole Lotta Red mixtape instead.
No matter how the song made its way to Spotify, “Kid Cudi”/“Pissy Pamper” is clearly a hit that Carti and Nudy have, as of yet, been unable to capitalize on. As appreciation track grows, it feels like the rappers are failing to monetize their own success.