Kid Rock makes amusing statements about “FaceTweets,” less amusing ones about gay people

KR 480

 
Kid Rock’s got a new album coming out soon. (Next month, as a matter of fact.) It’s called French Kiss. The implication is that there’s love to be found coming from the guy. Lust, at least. In any case, he’s making the promotional rounds, starting to fire up the ‘ole publicity machine, which means interviews (and controversial statements) shall spill forth like seed. From a tree. Like the Honey Locust, you guys.

A recent op-ed in the Guardian yielded some interesting results, though it’s not immediately clear how much K-Ro–whose real name is Robert Ritchie, as in Richie Rich–was playing up his “American” “bad-a••” persona for a British audience. You don’t persist in the entertainment industry for two decades without knowing how to play to a crowd.

First up, the good: Bobby Rich acknowledges how out-of-touch he is, at least where technology is concerned:

 

I don’t FaceTweet or whatever people do. I understand that I’m the old guy now. I turn on my computer and look at porn a little bit, see what’s going on in the news, but that’s about it. I’m comfortable with that.

 

Quick aside right here: There’s no way he thinks it’s called “FaceTweet.” It doesn’t matter whether he, personally, uses either Facebook or Twitter. You don’t have to use them to know how to manipulate them. Which he has: to the tune of 5.6 million friends on Facebook and just shy of 300,000 Twitter followers.

He’s also quite comfortable talking about his money:

 

I’m not just wealthy, I’m loaded. I can say that because I’m not embarrassed – I’ve made a f*ck-ton of money, but I’ve never made a dishonest dollar. I try to do right by the people around me.

 

Interesting that in the paragraph just before that one, Kid says he played Obama’s inauguration “even though [he] didn’t vote” for Obama. One wonders how he distinguishes between dishonest and honest paychecks.

The Kid-ster ends his little piece on a sour note, though, by tossing this deliberately inflammatory number:

 

Rap-rock was what people wanted at the time, and they still love those songs at shows. But it turned into a lot of bullsh*t and it turned out to be pretty gay… If someone says you can’t say “gay” like that you tell them to go f*ck themselves. You’re not going to get anything politically correct out of me.

 

Hmmm. As Celebitchy points out, it’s not such a fine line between political correctness and hate speech. It’s also not as if there’s a shortage of words in the English language for describing something you don’t like. In the immortal words of Barney Greenway, “Why don’t you just say it’s f*cking crap?” And, if there’s one person in the music business who should appreciate how easy it is to come up with new words all the time, no matter how ridiculous they might seem, it’s Kid Rock.

What do you guys think? Is KR’s ongoing rock-country reinvention worth your time? Has he been worth your time since about 2001? Where do you stand on this whole Kid Rock issue?

 

(Photo credits: Facebook)


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