THE TRIUMPHANT, RECTAL PROBING RETURN OF...

The "Fuck You" Series!!!
YAAAAAYYYY

First up,

His name is Kiiiiiiiiddddddd…you know the rest. White boy rapper from Detroit makes it huge with a rap metal sound and enough street cred to claim the hood.

The year was 1998 and Kid Rock had been around for about seven years when the Devil Without a Cause CD was released to a lukewarm reception. Thanks to a boosting from radio stations, most notably Chicago’s rightwing Mancow’s Morning Madhouse, something happened in 1999. Kid Rock broke and broke huge, finally escaping the local music scene dungeon and fulfilling the prophecy he mentioned so often on the album.

Rock has hit upon a grand notion: Rap metal was at its zenith at that point and he needed to reinvent himself. His previous albums had all been hip-hop and, frankly, not very good. He had the flow but the songs just weren’t interesting or unique enough. But with the sudden popularity of Eminem, people seemed ready to accept white rappers as never before.

Devil Without a Cause is a pretty good album. It’s also a patchwork of styles, all amounting to the equivalent of throwing everything against the wall until something sticks. Throughout, Rock plays up the white homeboy angle for all it’s worth. I bought it and played it quite a bit that year and occasionally after.

His next album was a shameless rip-off of the previous one and showcased Rock’s limitations to an embarrassing extent. He’d already started painting by numbers. The next album was a total departure as he embraced his redneck roots and started making country-tinged arena rock similar to the surprise hit from Devil called “Only God Knows Why.” Despite its popularity, the duet with Sheryl Crow was simply pathetic.

I’d already lost interest in Kid Rock by then for several reasons, not the least of which is his politics. During the 2000 presidential campaign and while talking to Mancow’s wild-eyed psycho ass he was asked who he was voting for. He said George W Bush because he’d “probably lower taxes.”

I remember actually double-taking the radio, which is not as dramatically effective as it may sound. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting him to endorse Gore either. I was expecting him to be apolitical like most people with the mentality he claimed to have on his one decent album.

How could someone who had reportedly left home in his teens to move to the inner city to be with real people be a neo-con? Was he just some stupid trailer trash celebrity? I was disgusted, and became more so every time he opened his mouth.

Kid Rock was the worst kind of opportunist: The kind that goes “slumming” amongst a minority group in order to absorb and steal the essence of their sub-culture so he can turn it into something marketable. In this regard, he is more reprehensible than his idol, Ted Nugent. As much as I despise the Nuge, at least he is and always has been a guy that sticks with his own kind. Kid Rock would rather have it both ways.

A few weeks ago I went to the movies with a friend of mine and Kid Rock suddenly appeared on the screen. Maybe you’ve seen this, too. While Rock warbles and screams into his microphone, we are treated to images of soldiers in Iraq mobilizing for battle and handing little Iraqi kids back their soccer balls with big smiles on their faces. Rock screams, “I’m an American warrior! A Citizen soldier!” My friend shook his head and said, “Look at this propaganda.”

I had a few more choice words about it. What was this, the 1940’s? Now I can’t even go to the movies without the twenty-first century equivalent of a newsreel trying to stir up patriotic fervor filling my vision? This is the kind of jingoistic, unquestioning garbage that has reduced world opinion of us to single digit percentiles. Kid Rock embodies all of the wrong attitudes for this century and this world and idiots listen to him because he “rocks.”

What happened to the foul-mouthed rapper asking ”What the fuck happened to the peace and the love?” I guess he never existed. I’d like to think he’s one of those celebrities that went a little nuts after 9/11 like Dennis Miller or Jon Voigt. But that would entail my ignoring his comment to Mancow in 2000.

No, Kid Rock is just a fake. He talked a good game but that was all he was ever about. If I ever find my copy of Devil Without a Cause, I will burn it.

Fuck you, Kid Rock. We really didn’t need another Ted Nugent, let alone somebody who might be a little worse. But hey, thanks for again proving what I’ve always said about Michigan: the coolest white guys often turn out to be the biggest neo-con assholes. They just don’t usually come dressed like pimps with blond dreadlocks, though. Like your president said, “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice…we won’t get fooled again.”

That's about as witty as your song lyrics...