Word: rocke
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...three acts make music of varying quality. Kid Rock often displays a throbbing power; Eminem is a clever, albeit socially irresponsible, lyricist; and the Insane Clown Posse is just plain malicious and dumb. But all three acts do share some core attributes: they make jagged, angry music, full of violent imagery and snide, snotty humor; and they perform songs that grind and groan like auto plants closing down...
...Detroit the breeding ground for this new white-rap sound? In part it's because Detroit has long been a musical city, and today's young performers are drawing from its legacy. Kid Rock speaks reverently of Motown, Bob Seger and MC5. Insane Clown Posse's terrible new CD, The Amazing Jeckel Brothers (Island), has a bit of the macho theatricality of Ted Nugent, mutated into something more violent and antisocial...
...Rock, 27, is the most promising of the crew. The son of a car-dealer dad and a homemaker mom, Kid Rock (a.k.a. Bob Ritchie) was signed by Jive Records a decade ago but was dropped in the early '90s, around the time Vanilla Ice caused white hip-hop to be seen as something of a joke and almost all white rappers to be viewed as suspect. Kid Rock had to beg his skeptical father for a loan to put out an indie record (he has his own small label, Top Dog). At a local record signing early...
There is a fear in hip-hop that white rappers will displace more talented black performers. Says Kris Kelley, music director for the Detroit radio station WJLB: "Eminem, Kid Rock and Insane Clown Posse are good rappers, but you could probably comb the nation and find 500 black rappers just as talented...
...meantime, their bosses continue to cheer them on. "They're like the Sex Pistols," says Doug Herzog, the president of Fox, who used to run Comedy Central. "They're the closest thing to rock stars I've encountered in the television business." Perhaps their ultimate punk statement is their next project: the prequel to Dumb and Dumber. "That," says Parker, "was pretty much just for the money...