Kid Rock

My favorite singer, songwriter, father, good man. Part old school rap, part metal rock, and likened to rap artist Eminen for his often profane lyrics, as well as for his roots near Detroit, Michigan, Kid Rock proved that he stood apart from the hip–hop crowd with his wild and diverse music. In fact, Rock (born Robert Ritchie), with his skillful heavy metal guitar playing, shares more in common musically with metal assault groups such as Rage Against the Machine and Limp Bizkit. For example, as described by Mark Seliger in Rolling Stone magazine, the single “Bawitdaba” from 1998’s Devil Without a Cause “mixes cries of ’up jump the boogie’ with guitar aggression, coming off like a White Zombie [rock metal band] cover of a Grandmaster Flash [funk group] song.” And the Atlantic Records website concluded, “Kid Rock unleashes the full–on motherlode: a rambunctious cocktail shaker of blue–eyed hip–hop, freestyle rap. spaced–out funk, psychedelic rock, jazz, blues and everything else under the sun up to and including the proverbial kitchen sink.” When the rap/rock star boasted “I’m going platinum” in the title track of Devil Without a Cause (a phrase that record company executives tried to persuade him to remove), he must have somehow known thatthis confident statement would become a reality. Moreover, the success of Devil Without a Cause eventually surpassed this prediction, going triple platinumfollowing his crowd–pleasing show for the music festival Woodstock and headlining with Limp Bizkit for a worldwide tour in 1999. After this, his music was featured on popular television shows such as MTVs Beach House, ESPN’s X–Games, and ABC’s Wild World Of Sports. Priortothesuccess of album “My big feat before that had been selling 14,000 records out of my basement,” he admitted to Seliger. Furthermore, Rock became the first white hip–hop artist to embrace and glorify “white trash” culture and to gain the respect of several African American rap artists, namely Sean “Puffy” Combs and Ice Cube, as well as heavy metal bands like as Metallica.