MY LIFE IN HORROR: THIS PLANET BELONGS TO ME AND THIS HIPPY WITH LONG HAIR

My Life In Horror


Every month, I will write about a film, album, book or event that I consider horror, and that had a warping effect on my young mind. You will discover my definition of what constitutes horror is both eclectic and elastic. Don’t write in. Also, of necessity, much of this will be bullshit – as in, my best recollection of things that happened anywhere from 15 – 40 years ago. Sometimes I will revisit the source material contemporaneously, further compounding the potential bullshit factor. Finally, intimate familiarity with the text is assumed – to put it bluntly, here be gigantic and comprehensive spoilers. Though in the vast majority of cases, I’d recommend doing yourself a favour and checking out the original material first anyway.


This is not history. This is not journalism. This is not a review.


This is my life in horror.


This Planet Belongs To Me And This Hippy With Long Hair

Did it not bother anyone because Kid Rock was clearly just an awful person, or because he has a black son and therefore can’t be racist, or… what, exactly? Like, of course he could say it, but, I mean..

Well, well, well. The year 2000 AD, get down with your bad self.


Things have gotten better. I quit working at the fucking pub. I didn't have a job to go to, but I simply wasn't prepared to work millennium eve in that place for the princely sum of double the national minimum wage. It’s interesting; obviously through the strict lens of transactional logic, it was a bad move, in that I ended up earning nothing and being unemployed. But, you know, I knew I was worth more.


Yeah. That’s what mattered.


Anyhow, 3 months of being unemployed wasn’t fun, but then I landed an admin job at London Guildhall University, initially processing forms in their registration department. It was a 9 month fixed term contract job. For the first time in my life, I was being paid monthly.


And I was earning - after tax, mark you - £1000 a month.


My rent, on the shared house I was living in with The Ghost, was £270.
I felt like a fucking millionare.


I started there because I’d assumed this was the point I acquired this album. Like, I remember my first Saturday after payday (fuck, weekends were mine, now, rather than being the busiest and most soulcrushing days of my week), riding the tube to the west end, going into HMV on Oxford Street and grabbing a fucking basket; like, I am here to buy some damn music.


I denied myself nothing, and I walked out £120 lighter, and with a canvas bag bulging with jewel cases.


And I got some beauties that day, some all-time hall-of-famers: Queens Of The Stoneage Rated R, NiN’s The Fragile, and Slipknot’s debut (later that year, I’d queue for hours in that same store to get it signed by the band, when they were doing their first UK tour. I still have it). Sure, some misses too; the cover art for Limp Bizket’s Significant Other got me over the line, and spent frankly too long in rotation; it wasn’t until I saw the band playing at Leeds in 2000 that the scales fell and I realised I’d been mugged off. But, you know, hey, they can’t all pay off. Overall, it was a roaring success, and one of the most straightforwardly happy days of my life.


And I really thought I must have picked this one up then, but I checked the dates, and that cannot be the case.


See, I bought Devil Without A Cause as a present for The Ghost - likely as a birthday present. And it must have been near after it came out, because I’d picked it up as a result of XFM playing the absolute shit out of Cowboy for weeks, which must have been in 1998.


Except… I wasn’t working in the pub until December 98, because I phoned in sick for Christmas. I remember, because when I put in my notice in December 99, the boss said ‘Wow, that’s two Christmasses you’ve fucked me over’.  So…


Jesus, you know what? I think Cowboy must have lodged in my head so badly that I went and hunted the album out once I had money. Like, I think that almost has to be it. I know I had the album by the time I was at Guildhall because I remember talking with people about it, so…


Okay, so; either that shopping trip, or one of the subsequent ones.


Back in the room. Jesus, I know the past is a foreign country, but why does it have to be such a fucking maze?


Anyway. The Ghost had access to a CD burner and a colour photocopier, so I knew anything I was buying for him, I was also basically buying for myself, and sure enough I still have the burned copy, somewhere on a shelf or in a drawer.


And I fell pretty hard.


Now, in my defence, my entire experience of Rap music to this point was Rage Against The Machine and Insane Clown Posse’s Great Milenko (don’t worry, kids, we’ll get to it before our time is done), and the aforementioned LB record. And I was - hell, am - primarily and first a metalhead. Sure, my respect for HipHop as a form has grown over the years, and I’ve lately been listening to a lot of it, for reasons that will become clear. So one might fairly point out that this album was almost cynically tailormade to appeal to me. Hip-Hop, but with slamming rock/metal guitars and a lead singer rapping about being a white trash trailer kid? How could I resist?


And I’m listening to it now, and you know, it’s about as well produced as any rap/rock album from 1998 could possibly be. The guitars on Fist Of Rage, Bawidaba, and I Am The Bullgod chug and crunch like you want them to, and Fist Of Rage actually has a pretty good riff going on.


At the same time…


So, you’ll recall back when we were talking about The Lost Boys, I posited the entirely uncontroversial fact that it’s just a bad movie, regardless of what your nostalgia may be telling you? Well, I stuck Devil Without A Cause on a few months back, looking for some aggressive music to help me pretend I wasn’t hating every second on the crosstrainer, and despite knowing every word, I found myself itching to hit the skip button about halfway through Cowboy… then again as Devil Without A Cause entered it’s 17th minute… Until I skipped Rollin into Wasting Time, and just noped out entirely.


I have a shocking and terrible news flash from 1998; this album may have sold 11 million copies in the US, to widespread critical acclaim, but it’s actually not very good.


I know. Try and contain your shock.


The why of the badness is trivial. To start with, there aren't enough good songs; that’s a pretty fundamental issue. Bawitdaba is a strong opening; it builds well to the chorus intro, and the first verse sets out the stall well; it comes off like a classic chest-beater, but there’s a bit more going on under the hood. ‘This is for the questions that don’t have any answers’ is a fucking good opening line, and the parade of misfits the song (album?) is dedicated to (‘the G’s with the 40s and the chicks with beepers’, ‘wild mustangs/ The porno flicks/ and all my homies in the county in cell block 6’) feels like if Fun Loving Criminals were going dirty on this one, and the riff is solid. Cowboy is what it is; it was a good choice for single, but it’s certainly run through it’s replay value for me, at this point. Good comedy makes you laugh; truly great comedy makes you laugh the thousandth time you hear it. Cowboy no longer makes me crack a smile, though I remember why it once did.


But then we get to the title track, and the problems start to surface.


Like, it’s not terrible or anything, but it is just a bit too long. The Joe C verse is cute, and contains probably the best single line on the album  (‘I’m a freak, don’t call me sick/ 3 foot 9, with a 10 foot dick!’), but there’s one too many tours through the chorus. I understand this is something about which reasonable people can differ, but, for me, a rap metal song that has you checking how much longer it has to run has failed some pretty elemental test.


I Am The Bullgod makes some strange production choices with the guitar sound, an issue that’s exacerbated on subsequent tracks; by the end of the record, I feel like I’ve heard seven or eight different producers who have aggressively different approaches to the job, which in turn generates a track to track dissonance that I found tiring. That said, Bullgod makes a good case for Kid Rock’s drug consumption; it’s also the last straightforwardly good song on the album.


The issue from here is pretty simple; I’ve heard everything Kid Rock has to offer. The entire gamut of his emotions, the limits of his rhyme schemes, the subject matter (having sex, taking drugs, being White Trash, going platinum, okay). But the album still has 15 tracks to go. And a combination of lyrical diminishing returns and the aforementioned tonal production and beat/tune choices mean that I’m both bored and oddly exhausted by the time the risible Welcome To The Party and faux-cool I Got One For Ya kick in. Marking the halfway point.


The back half isn’t devoid of charm; Fist Of Rage has a sub-sub-RATM quality that still has enough blood in it’s veins to bring on a nod, and Fuck Off sees KR audibly upping his game, in a vain attempt to not be demolished by his special guest MC. It’s the definition of a doomed effort, but it does at least give you a glimpse of what could have been, if KR had put more effort into being The Hottest Shit Ever, instead of merely declaring it, like every success-visualising huckster in the embarrassing history of capitalism.


Oh, also, in the final track, Black Girl, White Guy, Kid Rock casually drops the n-bomb.


So, you know. There’s that.


And, no, of course I’m not sat here in 2022 trying to get Kid Rock cancelled; frankly, if, here in 2022, you’re still enjoying Kid Rock, you deserve each other, and it’s none of my business.


What I am curious about is why I liked this so much, at the time and place when I did, given how transparently mediocre it always was. Like, I had RATM’s debut when I was twelve or thirteen. Fear Of A Black Planet existed, Straight Outta Compton existed, and in two years, A Certain LP is going to demonstrate just what a white boy from Detroit can do in the realm of Hip-Hop, and without being some middle class twat cosplaying as a drug dealer.


So, let's start here; it’s not good, but it’s not aggressively and unremittingly awful; if I also enjoyed Limp Bizket and, heh, Methods Of Mayhem, maybe I should just cut myself some slack. Like, there’s some legit good guitar playing here, and the band behind him is rock solid. All Hip Hop is essentially new to me at this point, so I had no way of knowing just how reliant Kid Rock was on what had gone before. I was still green, about the past and the present-as-was; the point of the big shopping trip was to take some risks, see what was out there. I was terminally easily impressed, and the rap/metal thing was still new enough (and rap in general still essentially unknown enough) for the thrill of discovery to whitewash a multitude of sins.


Also, I guess let’s kick this about for a second; it’s the same record I heard in 1998. Not a note has changed. What’s changed is me; my positionality to the work, and therefore my relationship to it. The stuff I loved is all still there; if I love it no longer, is that just because I’ve since heard so much done so much better that what seemed impressive now sounds mediocre?


Sure, that’s part of it. Shit, this one goes all the way back to our early conversation about the music of WASP, doesn’t it? I loved that, too, and, well, yeah.


And intellectually, that’s a perfectly reasonable, defensible position to hold. I was young. I’m no longer as young. Considering how long it’s been with some of the work I’ve covered here, it’s honestly astonishing this hasn’t happened more often.


Sure. But also…


Well, look, I think, even by the subterranean standards of hip hop and metal, this album is kind of frighteningly misogynistic. Not that other titles in this series so far covered and still to come don’t have their share of, erm, issues, but fuck me, this guy just has nothing else to talk about. This is a man who, like Fred Durst, appears to hate women because his sex drive means he has to be in their company but they just won’t stop talking. Seriously. And, like, sure, welcome to patriarchy, welcome to toxic masculinity, and it’s not like it isn’t a crowded field. But with Rock it stands out so starkly, for me, because of the paucity of the rest of the material; when your entire persona is pimp/street hustler, and you don’t have the creative chops or imagination or confidence to ever move outside of that, it becomes a kind of relentless dirge of self-loathing; the party anthems feeling like dead eyed embracing of nihilistic abuse just to feel something.


Only, you know, a bit shit.


Like, I bought this for The Ghost, a horrifically misogynistic man, and I remember he loved it but was surprised that I’d know he’d like it because rap wasn’t his thing (oh, yeah, he was a massive WASP fan). And for those of you staring at me in Guns N Roses, sure, but in my defence, I called it out there, too. And I think what bugs me - and I admit this is subjective, but - is just how deeply felt the assumptions appear to be, just how much it feels like KR thinks these are simply Facts Of Life, obvious truths.


I dunno. I came here to work out why there was this gap between early 20’s me and mid 40s me and I feel like I’m trying to grasp smoke.


That fucking n-bomb does bother me too, though. And it bothers me a lot that it didn’t bother me at the time. Like, I didn’t even remember it, so little impression did it make. And, again, not trying to relitigate 1998, but at the same time, that’s not a fucking hundred years ago, is it? Did it not bother anyone because Kid Rock was clearly just an awful person, or because he has a black son and therefore can’t be racist, or… what, exactly? Like, of course he could say it, but, I mean..


Like, Axl Rose has spent decades, now, rightly apologising for One In A Million, and here we are ten years on from that songs release, and a white middle class kid cosplaying as a street hustler drops it in a song talking about his relationship with the black mother of his son, and… crickets all round? I dunno, man, it feels fucking odd to me, and defnately kind of shameful that I wasn’t more uncomfortable about it at the time.


Because what it comes down to is a faint bad taste the whole thing leaves in the mouth for me, at this point. I don't like Kid Rock, as a human; and that’s okay, there’s plenty of artists whose work I love who I don’t like either… but the work is pretty mediocre too, and that’s what I think pisses me off. It’s one thing to get taken in by a blinding talent that happens to be owned by a garbage human, but when it’s a garbage human who also doesn’t have a huge amount going on creatively, when it’s an album that, in retrospect, feels like a cynical rebranding of a struggling hip-hop artist who saw the nu-metal wave starting to crest just in time to grab it, creating an album that feels oddly half baked and inchoate… yeah, then it’s just a little bit upsetting to have gotten caught up it that, taken along by it.


I’m sure it won’t be the last time, but even so.


Still, there is one big fat, silver lining. On track 14, with the pleasingly direct title of ‘Fuck Off’, Rock delivers his best bars on the album, over a truly snarling guitar line. The subject matter’s the same as ever - getting fucked up, getting laid, determined to be The Biggest - but it’s delivered with more conviction and skill than anywhere else on the record; you kind of get the sense of why the suits thought they could make use of this guy.


And then, at the end of the song, he calls in his guest MC.


And for the first time in my life, I hear the high, nasal voice of someone KR introduces on the track as Slim Shady.


And on a few short bars, I get a sense of what this form can really deliver.


Everything he’s doing is next-level. He does Kid Rock's same subject matter but there’s an edge to it; the flow is more assured, more intelligent, the rhyme scheme far more complex, and yet the overall flow sounds effortless, as though he’s making it up on the spot. And it’s funny in a way that Rocks 2D machismo simply isn’t capable of. Slim sounds like a whiny brat, the anti-cool, the nerd kid, only with more skill than everyone put together, a swagger that knocks Kid Rock off the stage with one hip swing, borne not from a need to rooster strut to cover for insecurity, but from a place of total, furious confidence - I got this shit, I own this joint, just you sit back and let me go (if my sources are to be believed, at least some of that swagger came from young Mr Mathers enjoying a rare encounter with cocaine, supplied at Rock’s studio prior to recording). The track bleeds away behind him as he closes the song out (‘so when you see me on your block, you’d better lock your cars/’cause you know I’m losin’ it when I’m rappin’ to rock guitars!’) and he closes with an electrifying dedication/call to arms that sets me off in a way nothing has since Rage Against The Machine.


So, sure, I think Devil Without A Cause sucks, and Kid Rock sucks, and I’m embarrassed that I loved this deeply mediocre artist and album, as a young man.


But, on the other hand, it did introduce me to Eminem.


To be continued…


KP
12/02/22

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