Devil Without A Cause

Music for incels to wank furiously by

Where's the zero vote option? Would generally prefer to be deaf than listen to another Kid Rock song

Rage In Favor Of The Machine.

A strong contender for being the worst album ever made. Presumably only exists to help the US armed forces torture people.

Complete shite

My heart sank when I saw I had to spend 71 minutes of my life listening to Kid Rock. I'll try to listen with an open mind though, it could be good. UPDATE: Nope. It's dogsh*t. 1/5.

My partner is from the Detroit metro area and grew up not too far from where Kid Rock is from. Despite what he says in his music, he grew up well off. This album is full of empty posturing; he wants so badly to be able to claim a backstory like Eminem's but it's just not the case. Stylistically, kid rock isn’t doing anything new, but he’s definitely doing it worse. His flow is decent, but is often undercut by awful rhymes and cheesy metal interludes. He’s trying to be too much at once, a rags to riches rapper who actually grew up relatively affluent and a southernish redneck from the north who needs auto tune to get through a straight country song. His use of profanity is gratuitous beyond what is necessary and one wonders if his sexual prowess is a fraction of how he portrays it. This music is clearly designed to appeal to disaffected white people but comes off as disingenuous and unnecessarily confrontational. This is music that absolutely no one needed. At best, it's someone trying, and not succeeding at genre fusion, at the worst, it's a cynical ploy to sell records to white people who think they're hard.

Fuck everything about this album. Misogynistic and gross. I don't care if this help start the rap rock genre, it should be kicked off the list for being hot garbage.

Honestly, this is so bad. It feels like your dad's highschool band reunion.

He’s literally the worst

It annoys me that people aren't giving this an actual review. I guess it's because most are American redditors, so 90% of the reviews are some variation on "I have decided that kid rock is a *racist*. 1/5". Some were smart enough to add something about hating rap rock to legitimise their non-legitimate reviews, but eh. Fucking lame. Anyway, I was in year 10 when this album came out and it wasn't the megahit that stuff like limp bizkit was, but it had a grittier edge and some of it is really fucking catchy. I listened to it a fair bit and bawditibaba has been in my party playlists ever since. It's a real slice of that late 90s middle America swagger. I don't think anyone thought this sort of stuff was any kind of cultural touchstone - it just kinda existed as the mainstream form of heavy music for a fun couple of years. It's over now but it's fun to revisit every now and then. Realistically this album is a 3/5 by no means essential. But I'm compelled to give it a 5 out of spite.

This isn't going to go well. Given his more recent political leanings, some of the lyrics are pretty progressive. Although, it's not surprising that most of this record is very bad. This sounds like something white dads think is hard or heavy. To be honest, the first two songs hit me like a nostalgia truck. "New Rock Radio" standards that played all through my youth. But even those were not good, just drilled into my subconscious. The rest of the album doesn't even have that, it a'int good.

I heard all of the singles off of this when it came out in 1998 on MTV or the radio, and I'll ask now what I asked then: If you are outside of the demographic where rap-rock/nü-metal was popular (not in the age range to be an aggro-douche at Woodstock 99), what is there to like about this? An artistic persona that's just as contrived as Vanilla Ice without any of the backlash, "old school" rap stylings on Welcome 2 the Party that owe less to Run-DMC's King of Rock than to some middle-aged white doofus dropping "My name is Steve and I'm here to say...". This is as credible as an unfunny rapping grandma sketch that you'd find from a bad improv group in Des Moines. The language or misogyny on this aren't the main offenders for me - instead this album just feels contrived and cynical and lazy. To those who claim that this album is good or important because it blends metal and hip hop and country, who cares? I can mash rockabilly, Tuvan throat singing, and Portuguese fado together, and that doesn't result in anything good simply because nobody's blended those genres together. And the lasting influence of this album is pretty much limited to bro-country artists who learned that cynically adopting a faux-redneck persona and singing about eating riblets at Applebee's and drinking cheap beer in a field (you know, "simple pleasures" that these musicians wouldn't be caught anywhere near) will move a few units. On the plus side, the guitars on the track Devil Without a Cause are pretty cool.

Buzzkill for my Christmas Eve

Absolute garbage. If you want to listen to edgy, filler lyrics with swearing put over a trash beat then this album is for you. Unfortunately for people with taste, this album is like eating an used sock dipped in mud.

I can understand why this is included as a historical document- its a critical record for bringing the aesthetics of country into the world of the rap rock hybrid that had emerged just before it. I don't know that it holds up as a listening experience for me. I also struggle with him going the way of his fellow Michigander Ted Nugent into the black hole of ignorance that is the republican party.

Haters gonna hate. Sure, he's a fake and a piece of shit, but this is a great record.

I can't believe I just made myself listen to 70 minutes of Kid Rock.

Horrific pile of horrendous bollox

Low rent rapping. This really is an embarrassing Effort

This album has no right to be as good as it is.

So the day has finally come... First of all: there is nothing revolutionary about his fusion of genres. Nothing. All been done before (and better) by others. I don't understand how that's supposed to be some kind of defense for this. I find the whole bloated thing embarrassing on every level, and I'm simply baffled how he got major label backing, let alone how successful it was.

Most of his tracks sounds like shitty Rage Against the Machine spoofs.

Absolute wank. Unless this is all a masterful troll, in which case it could be genius. Cliched, pathetic lyrics that sounds like they were written by a 12 year old edgelord. Weak songs, with the horrible autotuned country song being a particularly notable low point. Only saving grace is that some of the production and musicianship is actually pretty good. I have no doubt that Kid Rock is talented, it's just disappointing that he didn't choose to funnel that talent into something with a bit more artistic merit. The fusion of rock, country and rap is something the world could have done without.

"You can look for answers / but that ain't fun" seems to summarize Kid Rock pretty well. Is this album a sincere contribution to rock, rap and country music or a cynical costume hat thrown into the ring of 1998's highly corporate music charts? Unlike DB Cooper (who Rock references favourably in the opener, Bawitdaba), I don't know that even Kid Rock knows his own Identity. Though he expresses an affinity for those of the underworld -- thieves, hustlers, sex workers, addicts -- and a disdain for authority ("all those bastards at the IRS"), it's unclear what alternate world the lyricist proposes. That's the nadir: any claims to authenticity from Kid Rock would be seated in either his musical choices or his lyrical content but the latter consists entirely of boastful self-aggrandizement, references to drug use and sex and expressions of admiration for various criminals and CEOs. The latter is particularly confused as the references to hustlers, including sex workers, tend to be positive until turned toward himself (he's careful to advise you that he, himself, is not a "ho") and also his references to authority are disparaging unless coupled to wealth (he's seemingly rather proud in I Am The Bullgod of the respect he now receives from record company CEOs, despite implicitly disrespecting their contemporaries by earlier mythologizing DB Cooper who stole millions from corporations in 1971). The hard rock edge of the album (it's not metal by any reasonable standard) is palatable but a thin veneer - it consists entirely of distorted guitar riffs and has none of the bite, showmanship or technical panache of a dedicated hard rock or metal album. The song forms and vocal delivery are all borrowed from country and rap. No speed, no interesting keys, no groove, no difficult time, no instrumental solos and, while serviceable, no virtuosity. Even the guitar tones feel half-finished -- dedicated guitar players tend to carefully curate the particular sound of their instruments, but this is neither here nor there, like he plugged into a ProCo Rat and never fiddled a knob. The most authentic seeming reference in all of this work is the tie to country music. The chord structures and song forms (as well as the occasional, unexamined disdain for the government) are all lifted right out of southern rock. The echoes of the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd are throughout and there's no explicit callout (apart from the general vibe of Cowboy). It stands to reason that the one thing that shines through naturally is the true heart of his music; the strangest part is that he's not at all from the South or any place country-centric: he's from Detroit. All the same, the most authentic part of this album is the country heart of Kid Rock's songwriting. In the end, the rapping is competent if a bit stock, the rock production is the same and the more country bits are actually the best. Only God Knows Why would be a fabulous ballad about the pitfalls of fame if it weren't thematically gutted by the rest of the album. Should I believe that's the real Kid or is it the asshole screwing over his family and his production team at the end of Fuck You? It doesn't really matter: this is a surprisingly decent Southern rock album with hard rock production and some elements of rap, but written without a soul. Genre mashups sometimes get labeled as posing -- toe-deep dalliances with no respect for the history and context of the costume they're donning for a lark. In some cases it's unfair, but you don't need to deeply consider the lack of lyrical content beyond boasts or the Boss MetalZone guitar sounds to peg Kid Rock as a poser. You don't even need to know that he's the son of a car dealership tycoon in Detroit and not a kid who rose from the mean streets. You just need to know that he probably isn't both the plaintive, regretful soul of God Knows Why and also the Bullgod on the same album; he's an asshole in a mask. He's faking something and I don't care what -- and I'm pretty sure he knows it's obvious. You should probably listen to Devil Without A Cause. It's surprisingly listenable but it's important to keep an eye out for just exactly how empty it is. This music is a perfect example of the state of mainstream culture in 1998 and by better understanding that, we can undo all the harm done by fakers like Kid Rock. This is perhaps the single greatest act of poserism in the modern history of music.

Riding on the coattails of the other successful rap/rock/metal combinations coming out in the late 90s, this album is an unoriginal boring mess of songs. The title tracks "Bawitdaba" that propelled him into the bigtime is like "MMMBop" for rebellious teens. Don't even get me started on the cheese of "Only God Knows Why", a track that has some abysmal auto-tune. I know there's some bad music from the 80s that I grew up with and have a soft side for and maybe if I were a decade or more younger this might have hit me in high school and I might be a little more generous with my review but to me there's nothing here that hasn't been done already by Korn or Rage Against the Machine except for perhaps "Cowboy" which has kind of a country rap thing going.

Total embarrassment. What a bellend. 0 stars.

Wrestling with adolescent anguish and a tiny penis Kid Rock delivers a cry for help on this increasingly important record. This behemoth is truly one for the ages. Everything you ever thought you knew about music is forgotten here. There's both a prickly centre and shiny smooth edges polished to within spitting distance of a country nu metal lovechild that explores deep themes and tickles a dark underbelly of misery and misogyny. Eat a spoonful of this and stick it up your cunt, Jesus.

Arguably the worst album on the list. I've spent a lot of time questioning the legitimacy of this list based on some of the inclusions, omissions, and the general approach to updating the list, but this album goes beyond pretty much every other questionable choice to such a degree that it feels like self-parody. The cultural impact of this album is only negative.

Trash from a trash person.

Not really a fan of kid rock, sorta trash tbh, like bad beastie boys and I don't really like the beastie boys. If he coulda picked a genre

BADAMERDA KEKW

no way

Kid Rock's fourth album. Interesting mix of styles. According to Detroit Free Press, Kid Rock had fully developed his pimp redneck stage persona and rap metal musical style and wanted to make a "redneck, shit-kicking rock 'n' roll rap" album. :)

I'm about to wrap up this album and it has some good guitar parts despite the annoying vocals, so I'll give it a two, unless Kid Rock drops a completely unwarranted n-word on a track built solely on harmful racial stereotypes in a weird thematic left-turn for an album that already has a lot of dicey moments. Seems kinda unlikely though

What a terrible day to have ears

Wow. I feel like I've just licked a toad and fallen into another dimension. It's a fascinating clusterfuck. A total shitstorm of juvenile lyrics and lazy riffs. It reeks of somebody who's heard about a bunch of things that were cool in high-school, but never actually did them and now, approaching 30, is sat around with a blunt, telling 15 year olds how to be a rockstar just like him. A try-hard fuckwit. Banged Pamela Anderson though, eh?

This album left me embarrased for everyone. Let's never speak of it again.

I have to give 5 for what this was in 1998-. Fun and irreverent and danceable. I loved KR then. I disowned him when he connected with Agent Orange. This was fun today but it will remain in my private listening stuff.

I fuck with this way more than I thought I would or wanted to.

Love Bawitdaba, that used to be a big pump up song for sports. That's it. Not sure I've ever liked anything else by Kid Rock. Granted I've never listened to this album. So ok, the first 6 songs are solid (most notably Cowboy and I am the Bullgod) but the whole thing is repetitive. Similar beats and lyrics. For example, I liked Roving Gangster but it also referenced topless dancers (Bawitdaba) and had a similar progression and sound as Cowboy. Second half of the album is barely tolerable. If it's decent it's because it sounds like the first half (Somebody's Gotta Feel This). Welcome 2 the Party is just terrible - as if he was trying to write worse lyrics than Vanilla Ice. I've always hated Only God Knows Why - pretentious, and auto tuned to hell. All in all, the album is not awful but it's also not good. Can't believe it sold over 10 million copies.

Yeah Kid Rock is easy to hate on, and there's a lot of really stupid stuff on this album. But the 13 year old in me can still enjoy this after 23 years, so it must have something going for it.

This album is shite and Kid Rock is a cunt. Highlight: Bawtidaba

I’ll admit I went into this totally biased, but it’s not AS bad as I assumed it would be, as someone who had never heard Kid Rock’s music before. Definitely not 1001 albums of all time material, though……… I feel like people often romanticise the 90s but this album made me glad to have not been born yet. Best track: I kinda liked the funky auto tune on Only God Knows Why Worst tracks: Welcome 2 the Party, Fuck Off, Where U At Rock, Bawitdaba, Cowboy, Devil Without A Cause, Roving Gangster, I Got One for Ya’, Somebody’s Gotta Feel This, Black Chick, White Guy/I Am the Bulldog (WHY is this song TWELVE MINUTES LONG????? I thought it was almost OVER). 1 star for…. creativity I guess 👍🏼

The rock and rap components individually are not bad. But the transitions are too jarring; I would be enjoying the guitar riff, and then suddenly the verse starts.

Crap Metal, Country Crap, Crap Rock. He mixed a variety of genres and the album still manages to sound boring. 1 ⭐ for Eminem.

Dumb as a brick.

Amazing, hard rocking songs and powerful vocals

Nowhere near as bad as made out - enjoyed some parts of it and had me laughing at its stupidity at many points but after the run on this group that was no bad thing

You know, I don’t really mind the sound – it’s the kind of harder sound that I actually like. But the lyrics put me off. There’s a bit too much swearing for me; I appreciate a well-placed swear for emphasis, but this is gratuitous. There’s also some misogyny in there that bothers me.

What if the Beastie Boys were just one guy, and what if that guy was racist? This is another entry on this website's shitlist, and I totally see why. Sonically, it's abrasive in a way that thinks its cool, but is mostly boring and dated. Lyrically, it's pretty dogshit. How about that one song with autotune crooning? What was he thinking there? I'm keeping two tracks, mostly for laughs, but the rest of this is so devoid of value to me. The last track had me intrigued - "Black Chick White Guy," I was sweating and tugging at my collar as soon as it started. A story-telling type of track, is he going to be sticking up for his partner or black women in general? Well right out of the gate we are treated to a litany of troubling tropes, and then two minutes in he drops the N word. I looked at the runtime......NINE MINUTES LEFT. What the fuck? I couldn't do it, couldn't finish it. If I become a spy and a foreign nation wants to extract America's secrets from me, force me to sit through that song and I'll sing like a canary. The craziest part of all of this is I don't think he's actually racist, I think he's just an idiot. That song was going for something decent, arguably even noble, but he doesn't have the tact or talent to pull it off. Flash-forward 25 years, he's out here telling Joe Rogan that Israel should start bombing Palestinian civilians 30 to 40 thousand at a time. He's like the Dorian Gray painting sitting in America's attic, hosting all of our worst tendencies and stereotypes as a culture. Detroit has produced some fantastic artists, but also some of the most bizarre white boy heroes in all the land: Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, and Eminem. Nugent has some heat in his catalog, but he might actually be insane now. And Eminem has some great albums as well, but he continues to serve as hip hop's (unwilling) Elvis, so the worst guy you know can say he doesn't like rap, but loves Eminem. Em and Kid are like bug zappers - their low hum and neon glow call out to every kid with a Cookie Monster flatbrim hat, Etnie shoes, and a collection of Monster energy drink cans to punch a hole in his wall, call his mom a bitch, and believe the world is out to get him. But my response to them, and to Kid Rock in particular, in the words of Tim's Kitchen Tips, is "no one cares, no one's listening." Favorite tracks: Cowboy, Wasting Time. Album art: Look at this scuzzball. The lighting is cool, the neon sign with his name in the back also cool, but Kid Rock himself....white boy with wheat-thin braids and a stupid cigar. What is he looking at? Someone to call the N word? I'm out. 1/5

Before my group had ever even gotten this album—hell, from the moment I found out this album was on this list at all, I'd already given it a 1. It was one of only two 1 I knew for a fact I was going to give, along with the Limp Bizkit album that's on here. And that's unfair, I get that. As I'm writing this, I haven't even heard the album yet. At most, I've heard the inclusion of the album's opener in Weird Al's "Angry White Boy Polka", Cledus T. Judd's parody of "Cowboy" "Plowboy", and the REGRETTING THE PAST video Rocked did on the album as a whole. And of course that last one especially would lead to me having a biased view-point going in. I'm fully aware of all this. But you gotta realize, even if I wasn't aware of the stuff I just mentioned, everything else Kid Rock's done recently would sure leave me feeling that way as well. This is the guy who would go on to release "AIN'T NOBODY GONNA TELL ME HOW TO LIVE" or whatever it's called and fully pander to the MAGA audience because those are the only people who sort of like him anymore. You give me an album by him, ANY album by him, and you expect me to go in with an unbiased mind? There's nothing listening to it could do to convince me otherwise; that I shouldn't just rate this album based on what I think of Kid Rock as a person and not what it actually contains. Because I know exactly what it is: it's shit-stupid country rap rock from a rich poser white boy selling a fantasy of being a suburban cowboy to other poser white boys. That's all this is, and the fact that it sold so much frankly kind of offends me. The hell was going on in the 90's that people just lapped this shit up? Hell, what is it even doing HERE, on THIS LIST? Normally I'm not one to ask why an album's here because I figure it has to be for SOMETHING, but in this case, I can't figure it out beyond MAYBE that it was important to rap rock? But was it really? Why is this something I HAVE to listen to before I die? Unless you wanna say it's because you can't appreciate the good without hearing what trash sounds like. I could possibly make an argument for Limp Bizkit, but not here. This IS a waste of a spot, completely. You can only imagine what else could have been included if not for this. Hell, I'm just left thinking about all of the albums my group could have gotten instead of this; from the proven timeless classics to shit I just love on a personal level. But no. We gotta waste our time with "FUCK ALL YOU HOES. DETROIT 'TIL I DIE, MOTHERFUCKER." And it's only because I wanna remain consistent in my intent to listen to every album here that I'm even bothering to taint my Spotify history with this sack of shit. So I hope you're happy, Mr. Rock. You've triggered me, at least. ---------------*****--------------- This part was written after I listened to the album, and... See, hours before I figured I may as well get it over with, I had this joke in mind. Imagine: all that preamble, 500 words worth, of me ranting on and on about Kid Rock and this album and the fact that it's on this list, all written before I even heard a second of the album. Then, when I get to the post-conceptions part of the review, I only have four words: "Well... That fucking sucked." You see the humor there, right? Oh, it would have been amusing—at least it would've been to me. Because right from the top, I didn't figure I had anything else to say about it. After everything I said beforehand, what else could listening to the album inspire me to say? Honestly, I WAS kind of considering just not listening to the album and posting that anyway. But I wanted to do my due diligence. I put YouTube in Incognito mode, started up the album, and... After a while, I got so bored of the album I just started watching Rocked's video on it and didn't even pause it. So it's entirely possible I missed some of the grosser lyrics, and, yeah, no doubt I didn't treat this album fairly. But the big singles and the occasional REALLY bad lyric aside, there's just nothing to it. Like every album that was released in the 90's, it's too damn long. There's so much stuff that could've been left out and no one would've missed it. Though unlike with other records I doubt cutting it down would help much. I mean, you'd still be left with Kid Rock's posing about being a "pimp cowboy," which only gets more infuriating every time he brings it up. All I can see is his stupid millionaire mansion. Seriously, Snow had more street cred than him—yeah, the guy who recorded "Informer". And at least Vanilla Ice was a goof so it was fun to laugh at his posing. I'm not even sure if Kid Rock's from Detroit! Lemme put time aside now to mention one thing I liked about this album, before I get into the worst thing. The instrumental for "Wasting Time"? I kinda liked it. Or at least how it sounded coming out of my iPhone's speaker. I thought it was some kinda monk chant that he'd recorded for the album, but I found out later on in the day that, yeah, it's actually a sample of "Second Hand News". I like the version I had in my head better. Speaking of the sampling, by the way, before my writing this I never 100% vibed with how Rocked talked about it on this album because I always got the feeling he thought sampling was cheap. Y'know, that sampling isn't an art form, as has been demonstrated on albums like PAUL'S BOUTIQUE and FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET. But that's just the thing—it's an art form, but the way Kid Rock uses samples is artless. I believe that's more Rocked's point; that every Kid Rock uses a sample, it's something where he could've recorded something original himself, but didn't because he's lazy and wanted to bank on recognizability. But let's get to the worst thing. Simply put, the last track on the album, "Black Chick, White Guy", is disgusting. Even if I understand that it's a true story he's rapping about here—supposedly, anyway—never in my life did I want to hear Kid Rock rap about ninth graders having sex. That's not ALL it's about; it goes from there to be about the consequences, but still. You're damn right I don't know the half of it—and I don't WANT to! So this ending up running on way longer than I thought: over 1,000 words. As I'm writing this, I have no idea if this website will even accept reviews that long; I might end up having to make a Pastebin for it. And of course it's an album as terrible as this that inspires so much writing from me. It's the frustration, and the fact that it's easier to dump about stuff you hate than stuff you love. I mean, I wish I had said nearly as much about MTV UNPLUGGED IN NEW YORK or GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD or SIGN "O" THE TIMES" or PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE or 21 instead of wasting my time on Kid Rock. Lemme, then, just summarize this whole thing the way I should have to begin with: this fucking sucks.

I listens to 2.5 songs. I just can’t...

Vou-me matar.

Rubbish

Didn’t mind it and was all set for giving it 3 stars until the last track, which is absolutely vile and puts a different light on the rest of the album

One of my old favorites

True childhood classic - saw Rock perform most of this record live back in 02.

All of the people giving this a "1" rating I don't think understand the historical significance (for better or worse) of this album. This is regarded as one of the (if not THE) first country-rap albums ever, with "Cowboy" generally regarded as the actual birth of the genre. Is it the best album ever? Certainly not, but this ushered in several other similar acts over the years and even influencing modern country; for that reason deserves to be included on this list and respected. For all his faults, Kid Rock basically invented a new genre with this album, which deserves a lot of credit.

Haters gunna hate I guess, but ya’ll need to lighten up a bit. Sure, he’s nowhere near as good at rapping as Eminem, nowhere near as good at rocking out as Rage Against the Machine and nowhere near as good at…. line dancing as Billy Ray Cyrus? (I know nothing about country), but he is mashing up genres like he doesn’t give a fuck and I found the results are enjoyable. He didn’t really make it over to the UK at the time so I’m judging just on the tracks presented here. I reckon a lot of the 1 stars are from Americans who are judging this on the “full package”. I’m sure his personality is completely vile, but thankfully I’ve not really been exposed to that so can go purely off the music, which I think is good fun. How can you not love that Second Hand News sample?

The most well known songs I had heard before of in this album. Surprisingly really enjoyed this. A good mix of numetal, rap, hiphop and other genres.

I never turned off Kid when his songs came on the radio but I also never bought or listened to any of his albums all the way through. I still wouldn't buy this album or put it into my regular rotation, but some of the songs on this album still make me turn the volume all the way and bang my head to the beat!

I tried hard, but it is indeed listenable if you ignore all the words he says and how annoying he is. There are instruments in here that make noise.

Not a bad album. It’s junk food for sure I’m not expecting it to be a life changing listen but it’s hick rock and rap. This album sounds like drinking a 30 rack of natty fishing and shooting BB guns

I was surprised that those first two tracks were the big hits. I thought they'd be scattered throughout the album. "Bawitdaba" gets stuck in your head pretty quick. It's been said that the key to the album is that is doesn't try to be a hip-hop album. And yet a lot of the lyrics feel that way, like what would guys who are out in the midwest THINK rappers would go on about? And then instead of it being on rap, it was forced into a blend of country and "nu metal". It works, but the lyrics to some of the songs are pretty brutal. More brutal than some rap records we have listened to? Probably not. Maybe if I had heard them over and over again I wouldn't think about it as much. But now, 20 years later, the lyrics are a bit more cringe-y. So yeah, I remember the big "hits" from this one, but not something I would come back to for a bunch of reasons. But the construction and production is done well. So I'd give it a 3.

Never listened to kid rock before, have to say i quite enjoyed this though. Loads of memories and themes in the music, for example i can hear a lot of becks sound in it and i thought beck was a one off, but clearly there was a bigger scene. Bawitadaba or whatever its called puts me in mind of RATM. I have to say that i thought that kid rock and this whole nu metal thing was just a sideshow but this listen had revealed that its actually a lot more than that. Cowboy could be a very good song also as could fist of rage which takes me back to RATM. Glad i listened to this tbf, want to give it 2.5 but thats not an option so its getting 3

An album that would most accurately be described as a guilty pleasure. A lot of the songs are pretty bad to unbareable,, However, there are some songs that go hard and I will definitely come back to. Highlights: 1, 3, 4, and 6.

Stupid yet fun

this this sucks i thought kid rock was a Billy Ray Cyrus type so i was looking forward to some corny but catchy country

hey did you know that this guys name is kid rock

Fuck this dude. Calling him a dollar store Eminem would be an insult both to Eminem and to dollar stores. I'm listening to this album at work, and I have to put my headphones in so that no one thinks that I'm doing so on purpose. The funny thing is that I could return to this album with a bit of ironic enjoyment under different circumstances. His rhymes are passable (at least for a white dude). The music is good enough. He wrote some fun songs. Then he decided that everyone needed to hear his fucking political opinions. Being this generation's Ted Nugent is nothing to brag about, Kid, and neither is your career trajectory. What surprised me most about this is that essentially every song I know by Kid Rock is on this album. Dude fell off HARD after this, although you have to give him credit for using up every last bit of his talent on this album. However, the quality of this album is far from enough to justify me having to watch a video of him shooting a bunch of cases of bud light with an AR to illustrate how much he hates trans women. I don't need to know what Kid Rock is up to. I deserve to know about what happened to Rednex after their hit Cotton Eye Joe (I paused this album to listen to Cotton Eye Joe, and I might just leave this song on repeat and pretend it's the rest of the kid rock album. It's a much more pleasant experience) Edit: I take back what I said about this album being okay. Once you get a few songs it, it turns to garbage. He used up all of his good lines on the first couple of songs 2/5 Somehow still not as bad as that Limp Bizkit album that also inexplicably made it on this list.

How was this simultaneously better and worse than I expected? I had a LOT of thoughts going through my head before listening to this album because I checked the global stats and saw this one had some...pretty low reviews. I'm a fan of rock, not so much a fan of country (save for a few albums or artists, namely modern Americana/folk or even roots music) or rap (except maybe Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, and the rap-rock stylings of Linkin Park). I do admit I tend to vibe to the samples used in rap, though - lots of unique choices everywhere that can work really well. Combining all three of the above genres, though? It has mixed results. Often times I didn't enjoy the licks/riffs/little musical throwaway bars, like the honky-tonk piano sounding bit around 2:25 of Cowboy. For me, it straddled the line between pleasantly unexpected and overly gimmicky. More often, I didn't think the lyrics were relatable, substantive, or genuine (for someone like Kid Rock). I'm the furthest thing from his intended demographic, as an Asian-American female who is pretty close to being straight-edge and probably considered a prude. But I do still really hate when artists try to sound tougher than they actually are. I did give this album as much of a chance as I could, considering that I don't enjoy Kid Rock's music regularly (for the record - I only have his song "Picture" with Sheryl in my library), and I seriously do not like him as a person. So far, and I'm almost 600 albums through this album generator, I have listened to every album all the way through (although sometimes in 2-3 listening sessions if the album is longer). And so I did that for this album as well. I will admit the musical production and composition were decently pretty solid, other than some of the transitions that could have been cleaned up a bit better, or some little sections that could be removed. I can maybe see myself listening to a version of this album that was just instrumentals if I were doing some repetitive work or studying. But I don't think Kid Rock's vocals are nice, and the lyrics are worse. So...2 stars because it was listenable, even earworm-y at times. The music carried him more than he carried it. Top Tracks (aka the songs that made it to my library!): Bawitdaba (it was honestly catchy), I Am the Bullgod (I can't place my finger on why the guitar works for me but it just does), Wasting Time (don't care for the rapping at this point but I can see myself listening to this at a BBQ and not hating it because the ~ambiance~ just fits and that hook is smooth and inoffensive), Fist of Rage (would listen to while playing an FPS game) Worst Tracks: Only God Knows Why (Does God know why the vocals were processed like this? It ruined the song for me, which might have been fine otherwise, albeit annoyingly preachy and fake in an entirely non-Kid Rock kinda way) & Black Chick, White Guy / I Am the Bullgod (yeah maybe I AM a snowflake because this made me uncomfortable)

When I was a tweenager I was really into 3 of these songs. They were "Bawitaba" "Cowboy" and "Only God Knows Why." I am fairly certain I listened to the whole album at the time too, but was uninterested in all of the other tracks - that is still true, and the sheer length of this album makes it all the more excruciating. Honestly I can hear how the first two songs I mentioned influenced my taste in those formative years. The riffs in Bawitaba still sound pretty good to me, but the lyrics are trash, and as this sound repeats over the course of the album it sounds like a pale imitation of Rage Against the Machine, without the innovative guitar work and actual purpose. What I still like about Cowboy (when I ignore the lyrics) is that it truly does combine country, rap and rock in a way that is convincing and enjoyable. The changes in the song make it a fun musical journey. In the end, "Only God Knows Why" is the one that I can most enjoy still. The use of autotune is actually pretty interesting, and the more introspective lyrics are a welcome respite after the continuous flogging in all the other tracks. "Black Chick / White Guy" is almost unbearable, as if it's one last attempt to test your patience if by some miracle you haven't yet given up. In summary, a terrible album with a few songs that I have memories with but no longer hold up.

The lyrical content is complete garbage in my opinion. Feels like something that was written by a person who wants to be cool, but is not. Dre and other artists that have a pretty rough and degrading lyrics at least give me the impression of having some self-distance and doing it in an ironic way, but didn't find any of that here. Every fiber of me wants to give this a 1 star, but if you put the lyrics aside some songs were actually pretty catchy, so it gets a 2 for me. Won't return to this album though for sure.

I have never listened to anything that has made me so completely sure that the person responsible for it is a total c**t. It's like the Beastie Boys, mixed with the worst of early 90's rap/hiphop, with any charm or nuance stripped out. Lyrics are a mixture of generic self-promotion that regularly turns into breathtakingly unself-aware arrogance, and lazy misogyny.  But, there are bits of it that are quite catchy  Nearly burst out laughing with Only God Knows Why (a self-pitying song lamenting how people don't understand him and like him) after ten songs of this, and then immediately followed by a song titled 'Fuck Off'  Pretty much every song is at least a minute too long (and there is a line in one of the songs where h talks about the producers telling him this and him ignoring them). 2/5, because it was quite entertaining in places.

It's not hard to see why Kid Rock was such a cultural force during the late 90s/early 2000s. There's a ton of charisma on this record, mixed with Kid Rock's "redneck pimp" character. There's a large swath of genres blended here, though country and country rock blends with metal and rap more often than not. Kid Rock is fine enough on the mic, though he is absolutely blown out of the water by the best white MC to ever grace the game on "Fuck Off". It's more a time capsule than anything: where I appreciate that it's here in order to tell the story of nu-metal in the late 90s, I think there are better examples of the genre. Also, how the fuck does Holland-Dozier-Holland have a writing credit on this record? Did they come up with the "blow bubbles up your asshole" line, or the "your girl is sucking my cock while I'm taping it" one? Favorite tracks: "Cowboy", "Bawitdaba", "Wastin' Time"

Despite all the hate Kid Rock and this album get, his debut is by far his strongest effort, as well as being the 10th best selling rock album of the 90s. If this was an EP of just the first 4 tracks and maybe a couple others, I would award him a 3 or maybe even a 4. I'm not here to criticize the trashy culture and lies he proclaims (like bragging about growing up in Detroit). Purely looking at the music, the production is funky and tight. The first 4 tracks are pretty good (ignore that cringy child voice), but the rest mostly sucks with just a few decent parts. The riffs are uninspired: it's an embarrassment of a rock album. The raps lack substance and are repetitive, but at least he has energy and has nice rhythm here and there. He tries to sound like Zack de la Rocha, but he's too repetitive to be anything beyond that. I like the old school hip hop half of "Wecome 2 the Party," but fuck the bro who requests "that fuckin 1998 Kid Rock shit." His country songs are the worst. I can't believe "Only God Knows Why" was a big hit... the autotune and dull melody hurt my ears. "Where U at Rock" is the only good song in the second half. "Black Guy White Guy" is a bit decent but it's three times longer than it needs to, and did we really need a copy & paste of "I am the Bullgod"? It's the best song on the album but I didn't notice much different. He loses points for lack of originality, a repeated formula in most of the songs, and for being way too long. Cut the album in half. On the plus side, it is focused and has nice production. This is actually on the borderline of 1 star / 2 star review, but those first 4 songs are enough to redeem itself.

Cowboy is still a banger but this is way too long and I just can't support a Trumper.

Bawitdaba is a banger but the rest of the album is truly terrible.

oof. bad roll to get this early on. day 11? could Mr. Rock have waited until day 1001? Kid Rock may be one of the first contemporary conservative grifters; despite his bougie upbringing as the son of auto tycoons, his music deliberately appeals to the sensibilities of a particular kind of working class Republican voter, the type that might self-identify as "trailer trash" or some other rural descriptor. Rock's grift has gotten more obvious over time (especially in the Biden years), but a lot of the right-wing signifiers he hit us with on "Don't Tell Me How to Live" are also present on this, his breakout album. it's brash, crass, trashy and politically incorrect, and makes no apologies for any of that; unfortunately, like most self-styled "provocateurs" on the right who make it their bread and butter to talk a never-ending stream of edgy tripe, hardly any of it lands hard enough to really be all that offensive. that's true for "Don't Tell Me How to Live", and it was just as true here. Rock even drops the n-word on the closing track and it barely registers! why does he always talk about holding it down for Dixie? he's from Michigan! I'm all for hip hop and rock music coming together, but only if they're both done to a satisfactory level. with this album, the rock never rises above the level of corny pentatonic hard rock and heavy metal schlock. this album's riffs are universally limp and lifeless; even Limp Bizkit has a great riff every now and again! the country nods are similarly terrible, and now part of me has this terrible feeling that, if this album wasn't (somehow) a smash commercial and critical success, we might have been spared the whole bro country trend. Kid Rock is also, bar none, one of the worst rappers of all time. his flows are embarrassingly rudimentary, and his lyrical abilities are basically nonexistent outside of the ability to rhyme the ends of lines. Eminem's verse on "Fuck Off" is an oasis in the midst of the Sahara the rest of this album's rapping presents. late nineties Em laid way back on drum pockets in a way I absolutely adore. the thing that I think truly gets my goat with this album, though? most of these songs are about absolutely nothing. booze, drugs, sex (sometimes implied to be with underage girls?), partying. great. not like we already have exactly one billion much better songs about those exact things! and when Rock does try to maintain a topical focus, it's mind-numbing. you want to be a cowboy? again, you're from Michigan. you think the mother of your daughter is a slut? you should probably unpack that one with some professional help. "Only God Knows Why" gestures in the direction of dealing with some personal issues, but again, it's hardly about anything at all. "Devil Without a Cause" is an apt title, but not in the way I think Kid Rock wanted it to be. I literally don't know what his cause is here. I have an idea of what he thinks it is, but it absolutely does not translate into the music. this is easily the worst rap rock I've ever heard in my life, and I'd be very surprised if there's an album on the list that's worse than this. strong 1/10.

Juvenile and unpleasant.

Mean-spirited.

One deserves a medal for listening to this piece of shite all the way through. How the fuck is Kid Rock on this list over Weezer or Neutral Milk Hotel? Travesty.

I really did try to make my mind a blank slate, erase everything I know about this turd, and try to find something to enjoy in this, but I failed. It's just not good. The lyrics, the vocal performance, the music itself, none of it works for me. It just feels extremely uninspired, lazy, and hollow (which is kind of incredible considering how much this dude talks about eating shrooms). I can't even lean on nostalgia for this one despite being a youngster when this album came out. If Picture with Sheryl Crow was on this album it would maybe get a 2, as that's the only Kid Rock song I can recall ever enjoying. A smidgen of sincerity goes a long way. Also, this being classified solely as "metal" is offensive. I did crack a smile once during this album, and that was in Where U at Rock where his little voice goes from left ear to right ear saying "over here," "over there." That shit was funny.

Oh god. Dear god. How does someone like this get to be here?

Please replace this album with anything. The new Taylor Swift album would be nice. This became near unlistenable once this unlikeable dicked started rapping about his balls and then brought in a child to accompany him.

Wow this is kinda bad

There are people in this world who are legitimately into this garbage. It's enough to make a fella to give up on the human race entirely. The rhymes are basic, the flow is primitive, and the content is juvenile. It draws inspiration from a half-dozen genres... and disrespects every one of them. I want to believe that this is a joke. But I know, in my heart of hearts, that it's not. It's a calculated play to separate angry rednecks from their money. And it worked. So, I guess... congrats, Kid. Maybe you're not as stupid as your album makes you sound. Maybe.

"Don't get scared now, you knew this day would come" - Robert James Ritchie Ah, shucks. I knew I was going to have to go back through this one. Yes, go back through it. I've willingly sat through this before. Not only is this an absolute travesty to most music, I can't even really give it the ironic enjoyment that the Limp Bizkit album is going to get (I will defend that mess, 🍫⭐🐟). So where does this album go wrong? Instrumentally, it's fine, the backing band knows what they're doing. Everything *around* Robert James Ritchie works well (I'm not calling him "Kid Rock", that's a dumb name. Planet Tad put it best). I'd like to go through each track, but there's an issue: This album is mostly filler. You have the two big hits at the beginning with the rest of the mediocre hits sprinkled in, in between those are some of the most boring songs to ever come out. 1. Bawtidiba - This song fills the same space as Carnival - Kanye West, Ty Dollar Sign to me: it's vapid and I don't care for it 2. Cowboy - The other big hit that could arguably be enjoyable. I can see enjoyment from this. 3. Devil Without A Cause - Only saved by Joe C., in my opinion. Only thing to give me any enjoyment. 4. I Am The Bullgod - Man, this song is *fine*, perfectly fine instrumentally and absolutely vapid vocally. Such a great choice to fit as also the closer... This shows up on the album TWICE for some reason. Last time I checked, it's not even different. It's literally just the same song copy and pasted to extend out the ending track (probably so he wasn't ending on the song where he said the n word but we'll get to that). 5. Roving Gangster (Rollin) - Everyone rags on Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle) but this is like exponentially worse. 6. Wasting Time - Definitely starts leaning more into the country style but it's still just unbelievably boring. We've had twenty minute long songs that are less vapid than this. 7. Welcome To The Party - Oh, sorry, "Welcome 2 the Party (Ode 2 the Old School)". A Prince you are not, Robert Ritchie, at most you are a Dueuce, er, Duke. Anyways by this point, if you haven't shut the album off yet, you're in for the long haul. This is probably one of the worst on the album, and absolutely one of the worst singles they had. The music video for this is also bad, but I haven't seen it in forever and I'm not going back to watch it. The featured verse at the end makes me think that Robert Ritchie just told them to do it for them instead of asking. 8. I Got One For Ya' - Genuinely, what am I listening to? This started off with him being drunk and then transitioning into OJ??? Funny now, especially that OJ's dead, but really just makes me uncomfortable. Feels sleezy to the worst degree. 9. Somebody's Gotta Feel This - It's at this point I realize, Robert James Ritchie cannot rap. Rap takes a lot of different pieces to make it work well: flow, rhyme scheme, instrumental cohesion (how you fit with the beat), and a lot more that someone much smarter than me could explain. Robert James Ritchie has none of these. There is one flow with a somewhat changing backing track and that's it. Again, props to the backing band, shame they have to be sacked up with this guy. 10. Fist of Rage - I genuinely cannot remember anything about this song and I just heard it. Literally in one ear and out the other. 11. Only God Knows Why - Ah, so Robert James Ritchie decides to show off his range from making some of the worst "rap metal" you've heard to making some of the worst acoustic "ballads" you've ever heard. Awesome. Just amazing. Great use of autotune as well, it doesn't reach Never Enough levels of comedy but it's *just* notable enough to be horrendous. Also, "You get what you put in" Sure Robert Ritchie... Sure... You really tell us that putting in garbage gets out garbage. Thank you with your redneck persona, from someone born WITH A SILVER SPOON IN HAND. 12. F**k Off - So to some of us who haven't actually listened to the dirty version probably haven't checked this one out, which I don't blame you it's NOTHING. There is one note I have for it, is that a young scrappy feature of a man named Marshall B Mathers III shows up on it... he doesn't have a good verse but I think he's got something, he might go somewhere. Also the last two minutes is just voice messages... Awesome. No notes. Amazing. Note: When looking up this song, Eminem quotes being coked out of his mind for this, the only time he's tried coke in his life. I don't really have anything to note but I guess that could explain why his verse was so aimless. 13. Where U at Rock - Okay, so decent idea with the panning, but it's still the same garbage as usual. I don't care. I just want this torture over. 14. Black Chick, White Guy - Finally, the last song. A 7 minute ballad, I guess, to his upbringing and raising his kids. Look, I'll give him one thing, he definitely gave an interesting story. Just a shame that it feels fabricated, solely cause of his "redneck pimp" persona bleeding into it. This guy could tell me a concrete fact and I wouldn't be able to trust him. Oh yeah and this is the one where he says the n word, so any good semblance I had for this automatically gets nullified. Oh, and fun fact, this isn't even from this album. It's listed as such but this is actually a song from the album before this, just slapped on with no care, attached with a "remix" of I Am A Bullgod, which I put in quotations cause I am 90% sure it's just the same song. Wouldn't put it past him. All in all, this was genuinely one of the worst albums I've suffered through. Despite being a nu metal / rap metal fan, this is one of the worst albums to ever come out of this. It's aimless, it's repetitive, it's annoying, it's sleezy to a fault, and it's DIAMOND SELLING. Yes, it's rated Diamond by the RIAA, meaning millions on top of millions bought this record. Millions of people suckered by a decent blow up single and now have this in their collection. I am one of those people and I regret ever listening to this.

Lowest common denominator rap rock. There are countless records excluded from the list from this same year that are more deserving of your attention. Here’s five of them: Black Star - Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star Tortoise - TNT Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come Duster - Stratosphere Boredoms - Super Æ

This is the worst Beastie Boys album I’ve ever listened to. OK, fine, I’ll be real with you, it’s a completely soulless, uninspired, mediocre 2 that probably has at least one or two guilty pleasures on it, if only for their presence in the cultural zeitgeist of the time, or in the obnoxious case of Cowboy, a genuine acknowledgement that there is something catchy to it, however minor, if only for the obvious sample and how Neil Cicierega has used it in the years since. From listening solely to the clean version, and refusing to hear Kid Rock openly use the N-word on the original final track of this album, what I find is that this is my “rap / country / rock fusion whatever the fuck genre we’re defining this as” version of Apocalypse Dudes, in which if you completely ignore the fucking horribly dated lyrics and just pluck one song from this album at a time while exercising or something else, you will end up with a small but effective boost of energy in terms of having not terrible guitar and drum work, even with Kid Rock just screaming on more than half the tracks. As an entire album experience though, it is objectively so fucking boring, so draining, so long, so repetitive, and so similar for most of its tracks, that the only reason it’s even partially getting a 2 is that there are at least a few fleeting moments of actual tiny headbops that come in and out, unlike that fucking awful Tricky album (Maxinquaye is still worse, yes, sue me). Out of a complete lack of respect for Kid Rock as a person though, even though this album is a 2 in my mind, I'm going to rate it a 1 anyway, because fuck you, Kid Rock.

I think it's easy to see Kid Rock on anything in 2023 and want to immediately give it a 1. I told myself: "No. I refuse to succumb to my biases. I will be the better man and listen to this with an open mind", I really did. In spite of all that, this album just sucks. First Track is what if "Bulls on Parade" had ADHD and no interesting messaging. The second track is again, one of the most obnoxious things I have ever heard. In short, if Turbonegro's Apocalypse Dudes was all the good about late 90s edgyboy Four Loko culture put into one album, then this is all the bad. This is like if someone took RATM and Alice In Chains, subtracted everything that makes those two acts interesting/worthwhile listening to, and made an album from the week-old moldy leftovers. This album has a terrible habit of making 4-minute tracks that feel like they're 30 minutes long. The worst of rap + the worst of country + a shred of hardcore = a real stinker of an album. While a lot of Eminem's stuff hasn't aged great either, I still can't believe he featured on this album. Kid Rock should be be tried for war crimes for putting a 12-minute track in this album, although, somehow, that one track manages to be the most coherent out of the entire album (but I still won't add it to my playlist with my favorites from each album because I don't want a 12-minute Kid Rock track in my rotation). Strong 1.

Awful

This must only be on here because it had a lot of sales. There's no value.

Why is this listed under metal?

I was honestly going to give this a 2 but the samey-sounding songs do nothing to justify the hour plus runtime. Maybe if the album was cut if half. “But this was one of the first country-rap albums ever! He pioneered the genre!” What a terrible genre

A product of the times, hasn’t aged well. He’s a rich kid from Michigan cosplaying as working class redneck trailer trash. That last track is some real red pill, incel MGTOW garbage. Though not on this album, it has forever annoyed me that he rhymes “things” with “things” on All Summer Long. He sucks.

I tried, I really did. Sickened by the sight of this absolute melt of a man, I huffed and puffed and put it on Spotify before getting into my morning shower. Quickly, I found myself outside my house on the porch, sat in a rocking chair and asking Cleetus to "beer me", before exploding the can he'd gently throw over to me on my forehead and downing the entire thing. Soon after, a neighbourhood racoon scuttled by but didn't make it any further than the pellets which came careening out of my shotgun. Of course, none of this really happened but it is fair more enjoyable to type that than it was to listen to the first three songs of this tripe, which is where my journey ended. A shitey shite shitebag.

I listened to (a bit of) this on YouTube on an incognito tab because the thought of someone seeing it in my Spotify or internet history was too embarrassing

God I hate this garbage. Shitty rap rock. And too long like so much 90s crap. Doesn't help he is a Trump supporter.