b. Robert James Ritchie, 17 January 1971, Romeo, Michigan, USA. Although his name has often been linked to the inner-city Detroit rap scene, Ritchie grew up in the overwhelmingly white suburb of Romeo, only venturing into the city proper as a teenager to attend rap concerts and talent shows. His early musical environment was a paradoxical mix of Midwest rock such as Bob Seger and the hip-hop and electro sounds accompanying the first national craze for breakdancing. After witnessing a DJ battle between Davy D and AJ Scratch on the Fresh Fest tour, young Ritchie was inspired to try his hand at DJing, ruining his mother's phonograph in the process. His continued efforts as a rapper and DJ led to basement parties and criminal mischief in the black neighbourhoods of nearby Mt. Clemens. It was at this stage that he adopted the name Kid Rock, although it is not entirely clear whether he earned the name from his prowess as a DJ, or from an apprenticeship in the retail side of the local freebase cocaine business. In either case his local talent show appearances and demo tapes eventually landed him a gig opening for Boogie Down Productions, and a $100,000 recording contract with their new label Jive Records. The resultant 1990 debut Grits Sandwiches For Breakfast featured production work from BDP extended-family members D-Square and D-Nice, as well as Too $hort, and a local engineer named Mike E. Clark (who went on to unleash the Insane Clown Posse on an unsuspecting world). Aiming for a stylistic niche somewhere between the Beastie Boys and 2 Live Crew, the pro-cunnilingus single "Yo-Da-Lin In The Valley" generated little chart success but made history nonetheless by earning the college radio station of SUNY Cortland (WSUC) a fine of $23,750; the largest ever levelled at a non-commercial radio station for the broadcast of obscene material.
Continuing his association with the emergent gangsta-rap genre, Kid Rock supported Ice Cube and Too $hort on tour, trailing the tour bus in a Grand Marquis with his turntables in the trunk. After the tour he relocated to Brooklyn, New York and began work on the first of two poorly received releases for Continuum Records, The Polyfuze Method and the cassette-only Fire It Up EP. He then turned his efforts to running his own independent Top Dog imprint from the basement of his Michigan home, releasing and distributing Early Mornin' Stoned Pimp. This was a foray into a west coast G-funk sound, albeit filtered through his ever-present rock influences and incorporating the work of Black Crowes keyboard player Ed Harsch and Sub Pop Records vocalist Thornetta Davis.
The relative success of Kid Rock's self-distributed work on Top Dog prompted a distribution contract with Atlantic Records for his next effort. By now he had formed a proper backing band, flippantly titled Twisted Brown Trucker, which featured diminutive rapper Joe C. (b. Joseph Calleja, 9 November 1974, Taylor, Michigan, USA, d. 16 November 2000, Taylor, Michigan, USA), guitarists Kenny Olson and Jason Krause, turntablist Uncle Kracker (b. Matthew Shafer, 6 June 1974, Mount Clemens, Michigan, USA), and drummer Stefanie Eulinberg. On 1998's Devil Without A Cause, timing and major-label promotional muscle finally combined to deliver his confident fusion of a bewildering range of rap, country and hard rock influences to a wider audience, causing the album to climb into the Billboard Top 5 in the process.
Shortly after the release of the retrospective The History Of Rock in 2000, Kid Rock's longtime stage foil Joe C. died in his sleep (he had suffered most of his life from the crippling celiac disease). His DJ Uncle Kracker also parted company with the Twisted Brown Trucker band to launch a successful solo career in 2001 with the Top 10 hit "Follow Me". Kid Rock bounced back from this period of turmoil, recording a new album Cocky and landing in the upper regions of the US singles chart with "Forever" and the Sheryl Crow country rock duet "Picture'. His third major label album, 2003"s Kid Rock, was his most country-influenced to date, and also featured a cover version of Bad Company's "Feel Like Makin' Love". He subsequently affirmed his country credentials on duets with Gretchen Wilson and Jerry Lee Lewis, and in 2007 turned out a straightforward country rock album, Rock N Roll Jesus. The collection provided the singer with his first US chart-topping album.
