When my name was thrown out there for US Senate I decided to launch kidrockforsenate.com....
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It remains to be seen if we'll have to call Kid Rock "Sen. Ritchie" at some point, but regardless, Jason Aldean can now call him homie. After flirting with pedal steel and other down-home country sounds on his past few albums, the Detroit rap-rocker has finally made it official and jumped from his two-decade home in the Warner Music Group to the Nashville-based BBR Music, whose roster includes such country stars as Dustin Lynch, Trace Adkins, Chase Bryant and Randy Houser.
A spokesperson for Rock confirmed the news that Rock will release his next effort through the BMG-affiliated label -- two years after he released his final effort for WB sister label Atlantic Records, 2015's No. 2 debuting First Kiss.
Rock's music has long had a southern-rock bent, mixing Lynyrd Skynyrd-style arrangements and blue collar lyrics on songs like his recent single "Po-Dunk," with flourishes of hip-hop beats and rhyming. And though he broke out of Detroit in the early '90s with swaggering rap persona that was equal parts Run-DMC and hard rock, he's long been courting a Southern audience with such songs as the 2003 CMA Award-nominated collaboration with Sheryl Crow, "Picture," and the 2008 No. 4 Country Songs hit "All Summer Long."
He joins a roster that mixes such established stars as Aldean and Adkins with up-and-comers Granger Smith and Parmalee. The move comes just as Rock appears poised to potentially make another major change in his life, as he's been teasing a possible Senate run in Michigan.
While Rock has steadfastly maintained that his Senate bid -- which has yard signs, merch and a logo -- is not merely a publicity ploy to market his upcoming album and tour, so far merch is all we officially have from the purported campaign.
Not long after a Kid Rock for Senate site launched recently, Rock dropped two news song that had their own jes' folks stump-speech-style messages.
In the video for the country-swinging "Po-Dunk," Rock hangs with pregnant moms smoking cigarettes in their underwear, bikini clad models firing guns at watermelons and cans of beans, good ol' boys muddin' in four-wheelers and blazing up wooden pallet bonfires in the front yard and regular folk drinking in makeshift truck bed swimming holes. The down-home Americana gothic images are accompanied by the plainspoken chorus, "That's po-dunk, don't give a flyin' hillbilly f--k/ I said po-dunk/ A yard full of chickens and a barn full of junk/ Love us if you can, sorry if you can't/ Holler if you is, shut up if you ain't."
At press time Rock had not made any social-media references to the label move, and a spokesperson for BBR Music had not returned requests for comment. One thing is for sure -- the other song Rock recently released is an ad for his next campaign: a 2018 tour. The video for "Greatest Show on Earth," a raucous rap-rock song, hearkens back to Rock's early days, with a career-spanning retrospective of his greatest concert moments, ending with the tease of next year's trek.
