Kid Rock To Rock Cheyenne Frontier Days

Kid Rock is a musical giant.

He is a great writer, performer and singer, and a lot of this comes from his bare bones passion for what he does, and from how long he's been doing it.

I remember him from all the way back in the early 90's. He was on the fringe of my awareness, but was writing material that would become very important to his breakthrough material, like I Am The Bullgod. I first heard it in 1993, but it became huge on '98's Devil Without a Cause.

Early records from him were defiant, dirty and the albums had humorous names like 'Early Morning Stoned Pimp' and 'Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast'. His focus then was mainly on rap, and while he was pretty big in Detroit, he wasn't extremely well known until Cause.

The 90's saw rap rock emerge as the dominant power after grunge quited and we neared the end of the Clinton era. Linkin Park, 311, Kid Rock and other rock bands that added DJ's and rapping were all the rage, but unlike the two contemporaries that I mentioned, Kid Rock could slide into good old American country, over to hard rock and then back into rap quite seamlessly, which showed a range that may be why we are still excited about Kid Rock's material, but not as much about many other rap rockers of the late 90's.

The thing that I've always liked about Kid Rock, from the first time I heard him 1993 until now, is that I always believe he is having fun making his music. Behind the sound, which is often pretty cutting edge (God Only Knows was one of the first times, besides Cher's Believe, that we heard the use of autotune), I can just see a grin on Kid Rock's face that shows that all he is really thinking is that his situation is pretty awesome. The same thing shows up on stage, where he works hard to put on a great show. It's like he's fulfilling a promise he made to himself and his fans back int he early 90's, when he was being dropped by labels and was considered by some as 'that white rapper that's not as good as Vanilla Ice' that he had it all along, and really is the Bullgod. His Cheyenne Frontier Days show should be a great one.