How the rock star became an angry citizen in the service of Trump

Elvis shook Richard Nixon's hand. Aretha Franklin sang for Barack Obama. ZZ Top rocked blues for Donald Trump. Pop stars have always been stage managers for the big American political stage. This year, the rock'n'roll machine is running at full speed in the presidential race. At least on the Democratic side: While stars like Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion, Sabrina Carpenter, Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo and Charli XCX are beating the drum for Kamala Harris, Trump has to start with a handful of illustrated mood-makers who have attracted attention in recent years mainly for their idiotic behavior. The inevitable Kanye West is one of them, a rapper named Lil Pump who was convicted of drug and weapons offenses – and Kid Rock. At the Republican Party Convention in July, the 53-year-old stormed the stage in leather gear (“Fight, Fight, Fight”) and roared with his fist raised to the metal riffs of his hit “American Bad Ass”: “You can roll with rock or suck my cock.” A nervous twitch could be seen on the faces of long-serving party officials.

Kid Rock, we remember, was the big-mouthed joker with long hair and a penchant for hats who managed to become very famous and very rich in the late 90s with a cocktail of rock, rap and country. His music sounds like a sip from a Bud Light can: sparkling but tasteless. Kid Rock was an original, albeit a terrible one. “USA Today” called him a “white proletarian redneck greenhorn with no grey cells”. He cultivated his aura as a wisecracking, beer-drinking, sex-obsessed, hamburger-eating “American Bad Ass” so carefully that you never knew where you really stood with him. Is he serious? Or is he just acting?

Back then, Kid Rock wasn't interested in politics. His life was about partying. Although he reads about being involved with everything from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, he believes that he's mainly spreading good cheer. When Mitt Romney asked him to say a few words at a political celebration, he replied, “If I do that, you'll shit your pants.” Kid Rock saw himself as a man of the radical center. Today he is Trump's biggest fan. His last album begins with the battle cry, “Fuck you all, you whores!” In the video for “Never Quit,” he swears, armed to the teeth, to “fight like a Jeep” for his country and not “run away like a bitch.” In principle, the video could be seen as a call for civil war. Is it a coincidence that Kid Rock is looking more and more like those Buffalo Bill types who stormed the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021?

Kid Rock lives on a ranch outside Nashville. His villa is a replica of the White House. When journalist David Preisner rang his doorbell at the beginning of the year to conduct an interview with him for Rolling Stone, an elegantly dressed butler opened the door and introduced himself as “Uncle Tom.” The fact that the man was white did not make things any more comfortable for Preisner. He found the fact that a rock star's butler is named after the most famous slave in literary history “a little dizzying” – a little confusing.

In April 2023, Kid Rock posted a video on Tiktok in which he was seen shooting at a few six-packs of beer cans with a machine gun. After emptying the magazine, he yelled into the camera: “Fuck Bud Light, fuck Anheuser-Busch.” Have a nice day!” The man foamed like beer from the holes of the riddled cans. Had a war happened?

Kid Rock is a big fan of Bud Light, America's most popular beer brand, brewed by Anheuser-Busch. He also served it in his “Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock'n'Roll Steakhouse” in Nashville. But because the brand has been struggling for years, its president decided to look to the future with a campaign “that is inclusive, lighter and brighter and appeals to both women and men.” She hired the well-known transgender woman and Tiktok influencer Alissa Heinerscheid to advertise Bud Light in a bubble bath, among other things. Too much for Kid Rock. He felt that not only his favorite drink was betrayed, but also American values ​​by the awakening madness.

Kid Rock likes to portray himself as a proud spawn of the white underclass. This has little to do with his biography. Robert James Ritchie, as his real name is, grew up as the son of a wealthy car dealer in a suburb of Detroit. His parents' property included a tennis court, a swimming pool, a horse paddock and an orchard. As a teenager, he was interested in hip hop and breakdancing. He had black friends in Detroit with whom he spent a lot of time, much to his father's horror. As a white boy with braces, he didn't dare to rap himself. When a white New York punk band called the Beastie Boys added rap and hip hop to their music in 1987, Kid Rock's moment came.

The first three albums, released between 1990 and 1996, went unnoticed, but by 1998's Devil Without a Cause, Kid Rock had found his sound of heavy metal guitars, rap and country rock, and the audience found him. His concerts brought together people who would never have met anywhere else.

How could it happen that an entertainer blessed with success, who is already a grandfather and has never been short of things in life, turned from a good-natured, goofy party rebel into a homophobic, xenophobic and hateful jerk? The radicalization came, as with many Americans, with the election of Donald Trump as president. The Covid crisis was the last straw. “Wear those masks, take those pills. . . Now a whole generation is mentally ill. . . Fuck Fauci!” raged Kid Rock in his 2021 song “Don't Tell Me How to Live”. He became a regular on Fox News and Trump became his best golf buddy. “The motherfucker cheats at the game. Exactly my type. Someone who wants to win.”

During the election year, Kid Rock toured the country with his own music festival: “Make America Rock Again”. A traveling circus of the right-wing subculture. Hedonism, piety, gunslingers. A Woodstock for conspiracy theorists, neo-hippies, anti-abortionists, end-time esoterics, beer drinkers, super patriots, gun nuts and Kid Rock as Jesse James. You can also buy T-shirts with the slogan “Taxes are gay”. After the elections in November, he told the “New York Times”, he would “tone down” the tone. But right now he wants to “give everything for my candidate”. Is it all just election campaigning too?

When the Rolling Stone journalist was reportedly saying goodbye after spending hours at Kid Rock's ranch, his host was so drunk that he wouldn't let him leave. He brandished a gun, got annoyed at African-Americans who were undermining the system, boasted about his jewels and challenged his guest to a fight. When he finally let him go, he called after him: “Can you write in your story that I'm pretty cool?”

An article from the «»