I had such a long and personal post written about Kid Rock and this time period of the late 90s, but I got a Windows forced restart and it killed it.

This is an awesome article and I feel it captures the attitude of a lot of people we currently love to hate. My life was on a very similar trajectory back at that point of time, but while I got off of it, Rock leaned into it and continues to do so, despite the hurt and confusion it gives his friends and former friends. I think everyone could learn something important from reading this story with an open mind.

Even if you hate read it, you will see someone who probably really hates their life despite having talent and success and is welcomed with open arms by a number of US presidents. I feel Rock was someone that was “proto-woke” in the late 90s and instead of embracing that, he bought into his own bit once he got famous and sold himself out to keep what he percieved as love.

The last third of the article where Rock is drunk and struggles to keep the mask on was difficult to not empathize with. He’s challenging the journalist to a fistfight while begging him to not leave, saying he doesn’t care what anyone thinks while asking if the author thinks any of this empire of his is actually cool.

Thinking about this while my computer erased everything I wrote and trying to think of a quicker way to get my point across, this really feels like the classic Simpsons where Marge paints the weak, brittle Mr Burns in the shower and makes him look at his real self. As someone who really felt support for the things Rock used to do but now can’t stand to see his face or hear his voice, this is a great article and a reminder that assholes are people too, and how many of us could have walked similar paths if we didn’t make some of the choices we did.

The views of his friends, current and former, are the way I feel about a lot of people I’ve known who have walked a path through life similar to the one he chose, and it makes me sad knowing I know people that truly are good people deep down, that feel they get something more out of playing a hateful and hurtful role. And at numerous point in the article, you see him acknowledge he is what he hates, but doesn’t know anything else at this point.

So glad you shared this and that I came across it. Thank you so much!

He was never anyone’s favorite. The only reason anyone ever heard of him was he was with Pamela Anderson.

https://www.eonline.com/photos/36274/pamela-anderson-through-the-years

Kid rock was never anyone’s favorite anything. He’s always been considered wealthy white trash. Nothing more

He’s always been a raging douchecunt.

Kid Rock is a piece of shit fascist sympathizer. I hope trips & falls into an active volcano.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Ritchie’s entire sprawling 214-acre compound, which includes a saloon, a studio, and a cavernous hangar with a pickleball court, a basketball hoop, and the original General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard in it, feels like what a 13-year-old boy might sketch if you asked him to design his dream home.

Ritchie is wearing dark sunglasses, a black shirt, jeans, and boots that he says “may or may not be snakeskin.” His stringy blond hair runs straight to his shoulders from underneath a white-and-red baseball hat with the phrase “This Bud’s for You” emblazoned on the front of it, framing a face that, at 53, looks more weathered than boyish.

When he first broke through with Devil Without a Cause in the late Nineties, on the heels of an alt-rock era whose biggest stars — Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell — were often cripplingly conflicted about the very idea of stardom, Ritchie made rap rock full of swagger, bravado, and party-starting anarchy.

In an age when many people have a story about a relative who arrived at Thanksgiving in a red MAGA hat, and shortly thereafter started forwarding BitChute videos and QAnon memes, the idea that a rich white guy would become a die-hard Trump supporter is not exactly shocking.

Kid Rock’s Jive debut, Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast, a sex-obsessed goof equally indebted to the twin poles of late-Eighties party rap, the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill and 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty As They Wanna Be, didn’t connect with audiences, and amid a subsequent Vanilla Ice-induced backlash, he was dropped from the label.

Sure, he will parrot Fox News talking points about immigration, foreign policy, or the economy, but what he seems most drawn to in Trump as a rich, famous, attention-hungry loudmouth whose cartoonish persona was once universally celebrated but is now toxic to half the populace is a reflection that looks a lot like his own.

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