SPLEEN
Well, I must admit to being a fan of Kid Rock at some point during my life.  He had a great band behind him and some cool riffs and some tracks that melded rock, rap and metal in just the right mix.  Like a well mixed drink.  But as time change music changes and artists change their sound.  Kid Rock has been evolving his sound from day one as a B-boy, hip-hop DJ to a white trash shit talker to a country boy.  But now he has gone beyond were I can follow, into the depths of southern rock.  Don’t get me wrong, I can jam to some Skynyrd or ZZ top, but it’s just not where I want to hear Kid Rock.  Granted this album is top notch if you listen to it without a preconceived notion about what to expect from Kid Rock and his follow Detroit cronies, for instance if you are sipping some bourbon from the bottle on the back porch on a hot summer evening this should be the soundtrack.

A.J.K.
You know I’m not going to lie either, I believe I was once a Kid Rock fan as well, in 1998, for about six months.  It is true that over the years Kid Rock has changed, he has devolved and is now reduced to becoming yet another artist who simply releases an album based on what’s popular at the time in hopes of clutching onto another money train.  I strongly believe that the success that Kid Rock enjoyed over the years had little to do with musical and/or songwriting talent, but rather the appearance of being ultra-cool.  It seems like a situation where instead of people listening to the music and deciding that it rocks, they saw him on MTV, said “Hey, this guy is wearing cool hats, banging movie stars and head-banging at his shows, I’m going to listen to what he’s doing.”, and then just sort of hopped on the bandwagon.  The irony is in the shame that his newest effort, Rock and Roll Jesus, is actually pretty good, musically speaking.  While it’s not the mainstream rap/rock fusion that gave him success, I think it rocks just enough to be considered a decent album.