Well, superannuated former Country-Rock sensation Kid Rock is making a first-class ass of himself in the public eye lately, so I thought I’d do what I always do when a musician is topical for all the wrong reasons…call attention to one of their worst efforts. Now, I actually rather enjoy Kid Rock’s later, more straightforwardly Country material, and I’ve even defended one of his later hits, “All Summer Long”, on this very site. But his early work, the material on which he actually “made his name”, is almost indescribably bad. We may be horrified nowadays by ill-advised Country-Rap hybrids like Jason Aldean’s “Dirt Road Anthem” and bizarre invocations of auto-tune like Tim McGraw’s “Lookin’ for That Girl”. But that’s partly because the general listening public has almost forgotten about this freakish hybrid of Rap-Metal and proto-Bro-Country that sounds like someone put Limp Bizkit and Billy Ray Cyrus in a blender. Going back and listening to it, it sounds even worse than it was acknowledged to be in its day, and completely explains why, despite his reasonably decent work later in his career, Kid Rock still has a reputation as a human punchline that goes beyond his execrable behavior in his public life.
Verdict: What in God’s name did I just listen to?!