For much of my high school career, this was one of the hot CDs. Everyone owned it. With the graphic of the ring-encrusted middle finger flipped up on the disc, speakers blaring \u201cBawitdaba\u201d and \u201cCowboy,\u201d radio playing \u201cOnly God Knows Why,\u201d everyone knew the story of how a nobody redneck from a Detroit suburb made it big. For kids in the late \u201890s, Kid Rock was cool.<\/p>\n
Since then, of course, he has gone equal parts country and Bob Seger 2.0, trying hard to appeal to everybody and leave his embarrassing white rap past behind. A select few may remember that Kid Rock started out as a straight-up white rapper from the License To Ill <\/i>school on albums nobody heard like The Polyfuze Method <\/i>and Early Morning Stoned Pimp<\/i>. It was a career going nowhere fast.<\/p>\n
Until Kid Rock hooked up with Twisted Brown Trucker, a true rock band, and in one fell swoop married his love of Southern rock to his white rap past and created a party record that reverberated across the radio. Rock and rap had been bosom buddies before \u2013 think Rage Against the Machine, Run-DMC and the aforementioned Beasties \u2013 but Kid Rock\u2019s adherence to the classic rock mentality was different. Unfortunately, it paved the way for acts like Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit, but that\u2019s not entirely his fault, right?<\/p>\n
All this is to say that Devil Without A Cause <\/i>is a fine record. Not a great one, for Rock still doesn\u2019t fully abandon the raps and embarrassing lyrics like \u201cGotta make this money and I make this money \/ This money is me this money is everything I do and see\u201d or \u201cTop dog I\u2019m the CEO \/ Role model, your m***********g hero \/ My motto, be cool, keep pimpin\u2019 \/ Don\u2019t sleep, we roll deep in a Lincoln.\u201d Yeah, I know part of rap is all about the boast, but a grown man shouldn\u2019t sing stuff like this.<\/p>\n
That last line is taken from the title track, which actually starts off better by telling, in essence, the story of how Kid got to this point and who he is. But it falls off the rails when pint-sized Joe C shows up at the end for his high-pitched rap; it may have been a nice gesture for Kid Rock to let his friend rap on his album, but it\u2019s a little weird all the same. Still, the infectious blare underneath makes it hard to dismiss.<\/p>\n
\u201cI Am The Bullgod\u201d and \u201cBawitdaba,\u201d the second and third singles, remain two of the better flat-out rock songs of the end of the decade. The band plays like a mother behind Rock\u2019s trashy, party-hardy declarations, boasts and urgings to get in the pit and try to love someone. \u201cI Got One For Ya\u201d is trashy fun\u2026well, actually, the same could be said for the upbeat \u201cWasting Time\u201d and the irrepressible \u201cCowboy,\u201d a straight-up cartoon set to music. <\/p>\n
Less successful is the Eminem duet \u201cF**k Off,\u201d the humdrum \u201cWelcome 2 The Party\u201d (the first single, a poor choice) and the dull \u201cRoving Gangster.\u201d But Rock throws two curveballs in. The first is the country pop of \u201cOnly God Knows Why,\u201d his first and best crossover song in this style, and the second is the closing story-song of \u201cBlack Chick, White Guy,\u201d which is musically bereft but hits home with its story and sample of \u201cAin\u2019t No Sunshine\u201d in the chorus. Both are proof that Rock is more than just boasts over Southern-baked rock, and they give the album a bit of depth.<\/p>\n
Best listened to loud, Devil Without A Cause <\/i>is at heart a party rock record with no aspirations other than sex and drinking 40s and celebrating the night with your buddies. It also stands alone among both Kid\u2019s discography and among rock albums of the year, perhaps the last half of the decade; certainly, there were better ones with more variety and fewer embarrassing lyrics, but there also were few this much fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":31151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8176],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-42841","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kid-rock","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42841"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42841"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}