Kid Cudi (file)
Photo: Shareif Ziyadat/ Getty Images

A man who appeared to get punched in the face by Kid Cudi at a show on Saturday night at Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom said he's not mad at the "Day 'N Nite" rapper after the incident.

TMZ ran photos of the alleged victim, Michael Sharpe, who appeared to have a small red spot on his cheek, but said he had no intention of filing charges against Cudi (born Scott Mescudi). According to Sharpe, during the show, someone threw a wallet onstage and Cudi tossed it back into the crowd. Sharpe said he caught it, but since it wasn't his, he threw it back up onstage again. Cudi then came toward him and began punching Sharpe, he said.

Sharpe said his friends held him back, and security quickly pulled Cudi away from the scuffle. "I'm not upset," Sharpe told TMZ. "I'm not going to be that person. I just want to meet him and be like, 'I'm the guy you punched.' I'm not going to press charges."

In a video of the incident that has been circulating online, Cudi can be seen asking the crowd up front who the wallet belongs to and then throwing it back out. When it gets tossed back up, he appears annoyed, pulls out his ear monitors and jumps down onto the crowd barricade and appears to reach into the pit before being pulled back by security.

A spokesperson for Cudi could not be reached for comment at press time, and the MC does not appear to have commented on the incident on any of his official feeds. The rapper is currently one of the opening acts on Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour. The Saturday night show was a solo gig that was not part of that tour.

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Shakira
Photo: Ben Hider/ Getty Images

Shakira has once again proved that she's got some hip-hop cred. She hooked up with Kid Cudi, for the remix of her song "Did It Again," which came out last month, and now the up-and-coming rapper appears in a video for the remix that leaked online over the weekend.

The scenes of Cudi standing in a room are cut into the original video of Shakira performing contemporary dance with a guy on a bed and relaxing in a sauna full of beautiful women. Cudi's most elaborate verse comes about halfway through the song, after he's spent the first part just saying "yeah" behind Shakira's lead vocals.

He sings, "I can put you where you need to be/ You can believe that," and raps about bringing good vibes to Shakira's life. Then the song returns to its original images of Shakira dancing around being sexy.

"It was a collaboration between this friend of mine who's a dancer and me. She showed me this contemporary dance piece that was produced in Iceland. So we said, 'Hey, maybe we could do something like this for "Did It Again,"' " Shakira recently told MTV News about the Sophie Muller-directed clip. "So we brought this choreographer from Iceland from this contemporary dance company, and we worked on this piece."

Shakira also recently talked about working with Lil Wayne on her She Wolf album, noting that in a musical landscape with no genre rules, it makes sense that she include hip-hop on her album.

"[I'm] starting to understand and assimilate and internalize hip-hop music and hip-hop influences, so I'm trying to incorporate them within my own music," she said. "Which is a new thing in my life, and I'm completely over the moon. I'm like a kid with a new toy. I'm playing with these new ideas."

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Kid Cudi
Photo: MTV News

The O.D.: A Mixtape Daily Exclusive

Kid Cudi, we see you, homie. Get that paper, playboy. Cudi is acting, doing a tour with Lady Gaga and, when that concert is over, sometimes he goes and does his own shows. Cudi is also already crafting his sophomore album for next year.

"Cudder, I already got five tracks locked in," he told us recently in New York. "We got Snoop, we got Pharrell. I just was in the studio with him. We got Jim Jonsin. I did a record with him. I'm gonna get back in the studio with him. Trying to get the right amount of hit records on this. It's gonna be the complete opposite of what Man on the Moon was. Man on the Moon was so serious. This one is gonna be more playful and fun. It's about having a good time."

Cudi has also been building a wave of guest collaborations from Pharrell to Snoop Dogg.

"People reaching out to me wanting to collab is so bugged out," Kid admitted. "I remember when nobody wanted to do any song with me, let alone listen to my sh--. It's been humbling since Kanye reached out. People seek my creativity; that's dope. I don't do the normal sh--. I don't make the normal songs. So when people reach out, that means they're on the same frequency."

Cudi is probably most excited about the remix of Consequence's "Whatever You Want" with Kanye, Common, John Legend and Big Sean, and he wants to include the entire fam when they reunite.

"We gotta do it again," Cudi said. "We gotta get everybody. We gotta have the GLCs, Really Doe, the Bentleys — everyone ripping it and dropping gems."

For other artists featured in Mixtape Daily, check out Mixtape Daily Headlines.

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Kid Cudi
Photo: MTV News

Opening for Lady Gaga is a dream gig for almost any artist — but the trouble is, once you get it, how on Earth do you come up with a set that can compare with hers? That's the problem opening act Kid Cudi was struggling with when we caught up with him last month before Gaga's Monster Ball Tour, which launched Friday night in Montreal.

"It's like, man, you know Gaga's gonna do the ill stage setup and mine's gonna suck. It's gonna be me and this DJ, and I'll be like, 'Alright, play the next song ... this is on my album.' I'm gonna be dodging Gaga's equipment and stuff," Cudi laughed before continuing more seriously. "Nah, it's gonna be good, man. I've been working on something just to step my game up from the last tour I did with Asher [Roth]. We've been brainstorming, coming up with some good ideas. Of course, mine won't be as elaborate as Gaga's, but I'm kind of on this tour as a fan, you know, I'm just along for the ride ... playing my part."

Cudi found himself on the tour after Kanye West cancelled his planned "Fame Kills" co-headlining tour with Gaga early last month. Cudi was a bit surprised to get the call to open Gaga's rescheduled tour.

"It was a couple of weeks ago, actually. I got the call, and at first I just had to see if it was going to fit," he said. "I wanted to take a lot of time off for my family, just kind of hang with them. It worked out in a timely fashion, I'll still be able to put in the family time after the tour, I got a lot of time off after that. So it's good thing, and it will make more people aware of my album. I know I'll get a lot of new fans just off touring with her."

So far, so good — Gaga even brought Cudi out on opening night to collaborate on "Poker Face/ Make Her Say."

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Kid Cudi
Photo: MTV News

Kid Cudi recently wrapped filming on the first season of the new series "How to Make It in America," opened for Lady Gaga on her Monster Ball Tour and is even set to headline his own shows soon — and he's also found time to work on the video for "The Pursuit of Happiness" with Josh Hartnett and Brody Baker.

MTV News caught up with Cudi on his final day of filming for the HBO series and he explained how he got Hartnett to produce and Baker to direct his next video. "I was actually telling Josh that I wanted to shoot the video. We were hanging out one day, and he [Hartnett] was like, 'Aw, I know this one guy, he's done great work. He's really dope and refreshing.' I was familiar with his stuff. He [Baker] did the music video for Animal Collective's 'My Girls,' and I was a fan of that video."

Cudi gave Baker a rough idea of what he wanted and the director embellished it, presenting something "dope" and special to him.

"I just saw the first rough cut the other day. Drake is in it. He has a cameo ... a bunch of my homies that I knew coming up," Cudi said. "We were just kicking it. When you see the video, it just makes me feel good, because I'm seeing all my friends and people that matter in my life. We were all celebrating. It's like a New Year's Eve-type thing. Everybody's just getting wasted."

While "The Pursuit of Happiness" features MGMT and was produced by Ratatat, they weren't available for the video shoot. However, Cudi is thinking about making another version featuring both groups.

"I'm going to pull the Kanye and do multiples," he laughed.

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Gloriana at the American Music Awards on Sunday
Photo: Lester Cohen/WireImage

Sunday night's American Music Awards were so full of incredible performances — from Lady Gaga's liberal use of pyrotechnics to Adam Lambert's sexy display — that the actual awards given out seemed almost secondary. Still, the night's biggest upset probably belonged to country act Gloriana, who beat out Gaga (as well as R&B star Keri Hilson and rising hip-hop star Kid Cudi) for the Breakthrough Artist award.

	AMAs Red Carpet

The country group formed in 2008 when brothers Tom and Mike Gossin teamed up with singer and solo artist Cheyenne Kimball (who had first grabbed headlines as the winner of "America's Most Talented Kid" in 2002). Though the Gossin brothers are from Utica, New York, they relocated to Wilmington, North Carolina, to kickstart Gloriana. Once the band recruited Rachel Reinert (whom they discovered via MySpace), they began working on songs and ended up teaming up with producer Matt Serletic (Matchbox Twenty, Edwin McCain), who co-wrote their first single, "Wild at Heart."

The song was the highest-selling country debut single of this year and landed them a spot as the opening act on Taylor Swift's Fearless tour. The group's self-titled debut album came out on Serletic's Emblem Records label back in August, where it debuted at #3 on the Billboard albums chart and sold 44,000 albums. They'll no doubt get another chart boost from their exposure on Sunday's show.

Gloriana are currently preparing for a month-long tour of their own before they re-join Swift on the road beginning next March.

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Drake
Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images

As we predicted back in January, Wale, Kid Cudi and Drake have had a huge impact on hip-hop this year. They've not only built a buzz for themselves, but they've found themselves standing alongside the likes of Jay-Z, Eminem, Kanye West and 50 Cent. And, as GQ magazine points out, they've helped to quell hip-hop's gangster persona and usher in a real-life focus. The three MCs are featured in the GQ's Men of the Year issue in an article titled "Gangsta Killers."

"Anybody from Cleveland will tell you, I wasn't in the street," Kid Cudi said. "Ask them, they'll say, 'Scotty was the goofy class clown.' "

The article points out the contrast between songs about "duct-taped kilos, exotic firearms, and freaky girls" and the lyrics of this up-and-coming generation of rappers. Cudi's introspective raps have helped secure him a dedicated following that propelled his single, "Day N' Nite," into a top-five hit and stoner anthem, and his debut album, Man on the Moon: The End of Day, sold over 100,000 thousand copies in its first week. Wale's attention to lyrical detail has established him as D.C.'s first major hip-hop artist, and his live show earned him a spot as the leader of this year's VMA house band and touring with Jay-Z. And Drake, whose So Far Gone mixtape and "Best I Ever Had" single made him the object of a label bidding war this summer, stood verse-for-verse with Eminem, Lil Wayne and Kanye West on "Forever."

While they have each helped to establish a new aesthetic for rap, they aren't too keen on being called "Gangsta Killers."

"The dope boy is going to be a fixture of black culture as long as 'thug' is a legitimate option alongside 'job,' " Drake told GQ. "But I'm not going to rap about how much crack I sold."

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Paramore's Hayley Williams
Photo: MTV News

It's no coincidence that on the weekend of Halloween (arguably the scariest of the holidays — save for Groundhog Day) mtvU is airing their Ulalume Music Festival special featuring AFI, Kid Cudi, Dead By Sunrise and Paramore. The show, whose name comes from an Edgar Allan Poe poem, is a showcase of artists who embrace the dark aesthetic and supply the perfect soundtrack for Halloween night.

During the fest, MTV News caught up with the Nashville natives Paramore and asked about some of their favorite Halloween costumes and memories. After all, they did write that song for "Twilight," so they should be experts of all things macabre, right?

"One time someone made me a Casper costume because 'Casper' was my favorite movie," Paramore singer Hayley Williams shared. "It kind of looked like ... what's his name from 'Ghostbusters'?"

Drummer Zac Farro tried to help. "Bill Murray?"

"No, marshmallow dude!" Williams said, referring to that frightening Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. "I looked like that, and the head was absolutely huge — it had these huge plastic eyes and I could see out of the bottom of them. It was legit; I could probably go to Disney World with it but I looked ginormous."

Zac described a Halloween highlight that involved him and brother/ Paramore guitarist Josh Farro. "When Josh and I were little, we weren't allowed to trick-or-treat — my mom thought it was Satan's day. But we saw Coneheads ... it was like a family of Coneheads — it was amazing."

"Wow, I probably would've gotten scared!" Williams laughed.

For more from the "New Moon" cast and to see an exclusive clip from the film, check out MTV's "Ulalume: Howling at New Moon" on Friday, October 30, at 9 p.m. ET — and check MTV.com at 10 p.m. to see the clip exclusively online!

It's Halloween Week, the spookiest time of the year and also the most fun. So as the leaves fall and it gets a bit colder, we here at MTV News decided to pay homage to the holiday by rounding up some of your favorite celebrities' Halloween memories and costume ideas — some even offer advice on how to dress up like them this year. So brace yourselves: You're in for one horrifying week!

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Kid Cudi
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Kid Cudi went from mixtape phenom to the upper echelons of the Billboard albums chart in little over a year, so it's no surprise he wants to keep the ball rolling. What is a surprise is who he wants to keep it rolling with.

We already know he's hard at work on projects with rapper Chip Tha Ripper and Brooklyn electro duo Ratatat, but backstage at this past weekend's Ulalume Music Festival in Columbia, Maryland, he revealed details of another album, a compilation disc he's dubbed Cudder. And he's aiming extra high on this one.

"Cudder is basically an album of me working with artists that have inspired me or artists that have helped me grow and people who I've always admired," Cudi said. "So far, we've got Snoop, Travis Barker — trying to get Green Day onboard, hopefully, Kings of Leon, hopefully. I'm really trying to do all the collabs that I couldn't do for the [Man on the Moon] album, and then some, because the album was so themed that I had to strip a lot of features. We're going to have the Clipse on this compilation, Robin Thicke, hopefully we're going to get in the studio, I just did a record for his upcoming album; it's amazing."

Cudi said he's aiming to have Cudder out by "summertime at the latest," and while the idea of him working with, say, Billie Joe Armstrong might seem a bit odd, he points to Moon tracks like "Pursuit of Happiness" (his collaboration with Ratatat and MGMT) as proof that he can pull it off and as a possible preview of how the song might turn out.

"On the Ratatat song, you can hear Ratatat and you can hear me; we don't compromise each other. That's the same thing I want to do with anybody I work with. ... I don't want it to be, like, a Green Day song with me rapping over it," he said. "What I want to do is, have the triangle effect. Have Green Day involved and have them co-produce with someone like a Ratatat or my producers, do like a joint thing, and then we all create from the ground up. That way, it's like a fusion of each sound and each inspiration."

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