Kid Rock [Clean] [Edited] [PA]

Performer: Kid Rock
Artist: Hank Williams, Jr.; Sheryl Crow
Engineer: Al Sutton; Blumpy
Producer: Kid Rock; Al Sutton
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Personnel includes: Kid Rock (vocals, acoustic, electric, steel & slide guitars, banjo, mellotron, bass, percussion, programming); Billy Gibbons (vocals); Kenny Olsen, Jason Krause (acoustic & electric guitar); Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Marlon Young (guitar); Bobby East (slide guitar, mandolin); Jimmie Bones (harmonica, piano, Wurlitzer piano, organ, background vocals); Johnny Evans (saxophone); Aaron Julison (bass, background vocals); Andy Sutton (bass); Rob Ebeling, Stefanie Eulinberg (drums); Thornetta Davis, Laura Creamer, Karen Newman, Misty Love, Sheryl Crow (background vocals). Recorded at The Allen Roadhouse, Detroit, Michigan. Personnel: Kid Rock (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, slide guitar, steel guitar, banjo, Mellotron, keyboards, percussion, programming, scratches, background vocals); Billy Gibbons, Hank Williams, Jr. (vocals); Jason Krause (guitar, acoustic guitar); Kenny Olson, Kenny Wayne Shepherd (guitar); Marlon Young (electric guitar); Bobby East (slide guitar, mandolin); Jimmie Bones (harp, piano, organ, Wurlitzer organ, Jew's harp, programming); Johnny Evans (saxophone); David McMurray (tenor saxophone); Larry Nozero (baritone saxophone); Rayse Biggs (trumpet); Stefanie Eulinberg (drums, background vocals); Bob Ebeling (drums); Aaron Julison, Misty Love, Shirley Hayden, Karen Newman, Laura Creamer, Thornetta Davis, Sheryl Crow (background vocals). Audio Mixers: Kid Rock; Al Sutton. Recording information: Allen Roadhouse, MI. Photographers: David Unger; Dave Dion. Kid Rock's self-titled fourth major-label outing finds him proudly reaffirming his blue-collar roots and love of classic rock and outlaw country music by inviting a bunch of famous friends to join him and his Twisted Brown Trucker Band in kicking out the Detroit-style jams. Any rap nuances are subtle, with turntable scratches sprinkled over the mid-tempo rocker "Rock 'n' Roll Pain Train," a hip-hop cadence pacing "Hillbilly Stomp" (featuring Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top), and the kind of fanfare-laced "Intro" that you'd expect from someone who put out an album entitled COCKY. Wielding an impressive array of stringed instruments, this Michigan native moves easily from a straightforward reading of Bad Company's "Feel Like Makin' Love" to resurrecting "Hard Night for Sarah," a previously unrecorded song from the Bob Seger archives. Rock's appealing croon not only works well on the aforementioned Seger song, but on the Harry Nilsson-like "Run Off to LA," his reunion with former paramour Sheryl Crow. Otherwise, he's mixing it up with Hank Williams, Jr. on the lascivious "Cadillac Pussy," recasting David Allen Coe's "Son of the South" as the hyper-boogie of "Son of Detroit," and running through the autobiographical anthem "I Am." Kid Rock gained his fame as a white-trash rapper, but he retained his fame as a white-trash rocker, using the breakthrough of 1998's Devil Without a Cause to refashion himself as a modern-day blue-collar rocker, as comfortable with crunching bluesy riffs as he is with heartbroken country. The former Bob Ritchie started this transformation on 2001's Cocky, an enjoyably jumbled album that didn't quite take off until "Picture," his straight country duet with Sheryl Crow, was embraced by country radio, reviving the album and even bringing him nominations from the CMA. Kid was already in the process of abandoning metal and, to a lesser extent, hip-hop, so he seized this opportunity to become a full-out rocker and outlaw country singer with his next album, 2003's Kid Rock. Many of Kid's signatures are still in place -- the bragging, the boasting, the songs about sex, fame, and rock & roll, the hard riffs, the self-mythology -- but it no longer sounds like a mix of David Lee Roth and the Beastie Boys (even if the latter's Rod Carew rhyme from "Sure Shot" is lifted for "Intro," just moments after a "So Whatcha Want" reference); it sounds as if Hank Williams, Jr. and David Allan Coe are his new role models. Both Hank and Coe have a similar sense of inflated ego and penchant for name-dropping that borders on self-parody, and Kid Rock follows the same path here, particularly on the numerous rockers -- rockers that range from the heavy, heavy "Jackson, Mississippi" to laid-back, loose-limbed boogies like "Rock n' Roll Pain Train." He wisely plays up the sensitive side of "Picture," too, borrowing from DAC's soul-searching ballads and Bob Seger's introspective numbers. He even revives "Hard Night for Sarah," a song Seger wrote and recorded in 1979 but never released (something that likely wouldn't have happened if he hadn't switched management to Seger's longtime partner, Punch Andrews), and the tune, along with the similarly effective original "Single Father" (inexplicably listed as a bonus track, when there is no other release of the album without it), gives Kid Rock an emotional underpinning it needs, since so much of this is nothing but good-time music. Of course, there's nothing wrong with good-time music, and Kid is proud to make party music -- which he should be, since he does it well. Song for song, this is better-written and harder-rocking than Cocky, and while it's easy to wish that Kid was still as witty and funny as he on Devil Without a Cause, there's a certain cornball charm to his unabashed silliness and how he treats every rock & roll clich� as if it was a newfound truth. That's the power of Kid Rock's personality -- he may blatantly borrow from his influences, and he may recycle and celebrate shopworn clich�s, but he does it with flair, style, good hooks, and charisma that shines through on each track. It's what makes Kid Rock -- both the artist and the album -- kind of irresistible. As silly, foul-mouthed, and obvious as he is, he does it so well you just can't help but like the guy. [Kid Rock was also released in a clean version with the profanities omitted.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Rolling Stone (12/25/03, p.107) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Best Albums of 2003" Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.198) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...KID ROCK is a monster: raucous and clever and unpredictable....This album is proof that Kid Rock knows what he's doing..." Q (4/04, p.114) - 4 stars out of 5 - "Rock's response is to ease off the hip hop and get back to the '70s, and it works."

Self-proclaimed "King of White Trash" (and proud of it), Kid Rock took his rap-meets-rock-meets-country hybrid to the top of the charts. After opening as a bratty hip-hop artist in the Beastie Boys mode in the early-'90s, Kid came back with a vengeance, diminutive rapper Joe C by his side, on the 1998 smash DEVIL WITHOUT A CAUSE. With a pimp/stud schtick worked to the hilt, he's an outspoken rock & roll spotlight-grabber the likes of which hasn't been seen since the glory days of David Lee Roth. He even betrayed his mellower side on the trail ballad and 2002 hit duet with Sheryl Crow, "Picture."

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