Hater Hall of Shame: Robert Ritchie Edition

Robert Ritchie aka Kid Rock,   Born January 17, 1972

Robert Ritchie was born in Romeo, Michigan, his father William worked as a car salesman, and his mother was a homemaker named Susan.  Robert was the youngest of three kids, and he lived the hard knock life on a six-acre orchard farm that his family owned.  At age 11, young Robert joined a breakdance group known as the Furious Funkers around the same time the movie Breakin’ was released – coincidence?  A few years later, he taught himself how to use a turntable, probably by watching and ripping shit off from people like Grandmaster Flash.  In high school, he began DJ’ing parties for beer, and later joined a company in Mt. Clemens, Michigan called Groove Time Productions.  He started out doing basement parties for $30 a night, and soon earned the stage name “Kid Rock.”  According to Ritchie, the name came from the party goers who liked watching “that white kid that can rock” – I think he misinterpreted what they were actually saying, “I’d like to see that white kid get hit with a rock.”  Not long after he began working as a DJ, Bob became interested in rapping and joined a local group called The Beast Crew.  As a result of this endeavor, he met and became friends with a man named D-Nice, who was a producer for Boogie Down Productions.  At the request of Mr. Nice guy, a rep from Jive records showed up to watch Ritchie perform one night, and this eventually led to a demo deal.  At age 17, he signed a recording contract and was soon performing alongside legends like Yo-Yo, Ice Cube, and Too Short on the Straight From the Underground Tour.

In 1990, Bob released his debut album Grit Sandwiches for Breakfast, because as we all know, this food is a staple of any Midwesterner’s breakfast (3/4′s of grits sold in the US are bought in the South).  Jive Records didn’t promote the album, and strangely enough it wasn’t because of the name, but rather the “Vanilla Ice” ripple effect that plagued white people in the music industry who were trying to be black.  Jive released him from the label one year later, and he returned to Detroit.  He was eventually picked up by an independent label called Continuum Records, and in 1993 he released his second album The Polyfuze Method.  Even with catchy songs like “Balls In Your Mouth,” it received only minimal amounts of airtime on the radio and sold a total of around 15,000 copies.  Like Jive, his new recording company didn’t think Kid Rock would become a successful artist, and they released him from his contract in 1994.

His luck began to change in the mid-90′s after forming a back-up band, Twisted Brown Trucker, which included a DJ by the name of Uncle Kracker, and a diminutive dynamo named Joe C.  I attribute much of the success from his 11 times platinum 1997 album Devil Without a Cause to Joe C., because if the TLC network has taught us anything, it’s that people are drawn to anything involving little people.  I will admit that I bought Devil Without a Cause and listened to it quite a bit, because his blending of rap and rock was something that was still relatively new – even though “Walk This Way” came out in 1986.  Yet, all six of his albums since DWAC have gotten progressively more terrible; and Bob’s off-stage antics like brawling at a Waffle House, or being one of the hundred guys to be married to Pamela Anderson reeks of someone who is desperate to embody the redneck to riches story he’s concocted.  Now, instead of “resting on his laurels” like other entertainers who have achieved fame often do, Rock has apparently decided to just steal (or sample) other artist’s laurels and pass them off as his own.  And with each new hit that used to be someone else’s hit, his sense of self-worth seems to be growing, too, as evidenced by the following quote from a past interview:  “I could care less if I can’t be part of your scene, because I am the scene.  I am everything that is.”  All hail the mighty Kid Rock, King of Everything That Is and the newest HHOS inductee.

A clip about Ritchie’s rise to fame from VH1′s newest show, “Behind the Music That Sucks”:

The next two videos revolve around one of his most successful (or most annoying, and least creative) songs, “All Summer Long”: