E22: Kid Rock

Drew Millard (1:34)

Hello and welcome to Macho Pod. The subject of our episode today has been in the news quite a bit lately. He performed at the Super Bowl halftime show. He has been lauded by politicians and influential thinkers alike as one of the leading lights in American culture, able to fuse good-hearted party music with a sense of representation that truly pushes America in an unequivocally forward direction. No, you fucking rubes, I'm not talking about Bad Bunny. This is Goddamn Macho Pod, a show about dumb guys. I am talking about a man named Kid. Kid Rock. All right, so first off, can everyone say something nice about Kid Rock? Yannick, you have to go first.

Yannick LeJacq (2:33)

Oh, man. Well, I mean, this caused, like, I'm worried, irreparable damage in my relationship over the past two weeks listening to Kid Rock.

So, but I was trying to maybe not defend Kid Rock, but defend the act of listening to Kid Rock when my girlfriend was very upset that I was listening to him so much. So, you know, I'll say I agree with him. You know, he's a little less pretty than Brad Pitt, but he does sling a lot more dick.

Yuri Rybak (3:14)

This is for the questions that don't have any answers.

The midnight glances at the topless dancers. I liked I like that album. I listened to it as a kid interested in the intersections of like rap and country and metal. Yeah, Devil Without A Cause got play in my CDJ in high school. And although I maybe didn't advertise this to my peers, there are like three or four songs on there that I can still conjure to memory. And Bawadibaw, of course, being the most interesting of them. And it's just like a really good nothing hook.

Drew Millard (3:57)

No, it's like, it's from like a song that one of the Sugarhill Gang guys made. It's like, the hook is like sort of a foundational through line in hip hop.

Yannick LeJacq (4:11)

Wait, did you plagiarized it?

Yuri Rybak (4:13)

No, it's more like the folk idiom. It's like a canon refrain. Yeah.

Drew Millard (4:19)

And hip hop is very like self-referential, obsessed with its own history. I often compare hip hop to like academia in that sense of like, you know, half the entire thing is like citations and the game is like, who can get the most citations, the right ones.

Yannick LeJacq (4:40)

Okay, I will say, I actually, I do have something more positive to say about Kid Rock, which is two things. Like one, as much as I do genuinely kind of dislike admitting it, like, I do genuinely like a range of his music that I've listened to. I think, you know, he's good at what he does.

Drew Millard (5:02)

Oh, yeah.

Yannick LeJacq (5:02)

That kind of like hybrid that Yuri, you were describing. But like I said to you guys, I think I said this to you guys, I also like have more respect for him than a lot of these other kind of like Maga turned country stars, because like his music, like I listened to, oh my God, what is it called? Bad Reputation, his latest album, a number of times over the past couple of weeks.

Drew Millard (5:34)

Thank you.

Yannick LeJacq (5:37)

One, I just consider it like genuinely better and like much less generic sounding than a lot of other like Maga country stuff.

Drew Millard (5:48)

Yeah.

Yannick LeJacq (5:48)

But I also respect that he, I mean, I don't know Kid Rock personally, obviously, but like, it seems like even in doing these like kind of cynical political turns, he's still also staying true to like himself and like his overall vibe and brand, which is like being a gen generally kind of like gross CD guy. And, you know, like I also listened to a lot of Jason L. Dian, the Try That in a Small Town guy, and like his music is just like, like I find that like so off putting on every level because it's just such milquetoast, probably mispronouncing that word, like generic country music that just does not like move the needle at all. I'm like, this is like background music for, I don't even know what situation, you know?

Yuri Rybak (6:44)

So just to, just to, for the, for the, you know, for the Canon record, it's taken from a Busy B Starsky line as seen in the popular film documentary Style Wars, but there is also a Sugar Hill Gang reference in the mix as well. So, you know, Beastie Boys make reference to Busy B, everybody smiles and thinks it's great, and Kid Rock goes and does it, and everyone calls HR, you know, it's a terrible.