Music

After years of speaking mostly to right-wing outlets, Kid Rock recently sat down with a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine, and according to writer David Peisner, their sometimes unhinged chat included Rock ranting about immigration, liberally using the N-word and, at one point, waving a gun in the air.

The story features a number of disturbing and off-putting scenes, including Rock casually dropping racial slurs a number of times and the opening bit where the writer notes that Rock’s white butler goes by the racially charged nickname “Uncle Tom.” It also mentions that Rock keeps the original General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard — which famously has a Confederate flag emblazoned on its roof – in a hangar on his 214-acre Nashville estate. Rock makes sure to tell the writer that Tom is his major domo’s real name, laughing, “don’t give me some s–t in the article.”

Near the end, after noting that Rock has switched from sipping white wine to downing three or four Jim Beam and Diet Cokes in quick succession, Peisner writes, “He’s sitting in a dark leather chair, shouting at me about something or other, when he reaches behind the seat, pulls out a black handgun, and waves it around to make some sort of point.”

Rock then notes, “And I got a f–king g–damn gun right here if I need it! I got them everywhere!” At press time a spokesperson for Rock had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment the claims in the RS piece.

The article traces Rock’s path from a child of privilege in the Detroit suburbs living in a huge house with his Republican dad, to his rise as an ambitious rapper and a libertarian who criticized the GOP’s stance on gay marriage and abortion before his deep-dive into right-wing politics. “I’m part of the problem,” Rock says at one point about the divisions roiling the country. “I’m one of the polarizing people, no question. Sometimes I bitch about other people, then I look in the mirror and I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, why don’t you shut the f–k up too?’”

The rapper-turned-rocker-turned-country crooner wore a “This Bud’s For You” hat during the chat, a year after posting a video in which he attempted to shoot up a case of Bud Light, seemingly in pique over the brand’s celebration of trans social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney. While Rock says he’s moved on from the boycott of parent company Anheuser-Busch he helped promote, the piece notes that among the “bigger targets” Rock, 53, is now going after are progressive ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s and Planet Fitness, reportedly a target of right-wing anger for its trans-inclusive policies.

“I don’t want to hurt people’s jobs and stuff like that when they don’t have any dog in the fight, but there’s a whole lot of other companies we should be going after,” he tells Fox News host Laura Ingraham during an appearance taped a few hours into RS sit-down, during which he also rages against “DEI crap” and predicts that friend Donald Trump will win the presidential race in Michigan this year. On his way to the taping, Peisner says Rock tries to dial up one of his “besties,” former one-term president Trump, who doesn’t take the call.

Peisner says he spent a year trying to get Rock to talk to him, speaking to a dozen people who’d worked with the singer over the years who had been upset by his transformation from a party-time rapper and rocker to a MAGA-fueled culture warrior whose music has taken a backseat to his public protestations. Kenny Olson, who played lead guitar in Rock’s band for more than a decade in the 1990s said he couldn’t understand the heel turn.

“I don’t understand where a lot of this came from,” said Olson. “I’ve always felt music should inspire people, not divide people. A lot of people from back in the day ask me, ‘What’s going on?’ I don’t know.”

Rock explains to Peisner that he hasn’t done many interviews lately because he felt they all became “this gotcha moment,” saying he doesn’t need the attention while gesturing to the green valley in front of him and adding, “look around. I live in my own world. And it’s great.” At one point, while flipping through a photo album of pics from his career, Rock lands on one in which he’s wearing a rebel flag-designed shirt while sharing the stage with the members of Run-DMC.

“Nobody said a f–king word,” he says of the group’s three Black members. “No one. That was the thing until all this woke s–t started happening.” He claims there was no deeper meaning to him rocking the reviled symbol many see as a nod to the era of slavery. “I was using the Confederate flag because I love Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I think it just looks cool,” he says.

The story includes a trip to one of the dates on Rock’s Rock the Country tour, in which Peisner describes a “sea of American flags, Trump 2024 merch” and rants by Rock about
“open borders, high taxes and a declaration that ‘Joe Biden can kiss my motherf–king Anglo-Saxon ass.’” In one back-and-forth, Rock appears to parrot Trump’s hateful rhetoric against immigration, calling some “murderers! They’re rapists! They are! MS-13!” before shouting “9/11!” in a seeming attempt to tie immigration to terrorism; Peisner says he noted the well-documented anecdotal evidence that immigrants commit crime at much lower levels than citizens.

As for his full-throated embrace of Trump — the presumptive GOP presidential nominee currently embroiled in a criminal hush money trial and facing three other trials tied to his attempts to hide top secret documents and interfere with the 2020 election — Rock says he knows exactly who the former Apprentice host is.

“You think I like Trump because he’s a nice guy?” Rock says. “I’m not electing the deacon of a church. That motherf–ker likes to win. He likes to cheat in his f–king golf game. I want that guy on my team. I want the guy who goes, ‘I’m going to fight with you.’”

Peisner says Rock — whose bi-racial son was born from a high school relationship with a Black woman — liberally uses the n-word throughout the interview, in which he speculates that a decade out from his last big hit, the singer’s right wing embrace might be as much about “managing the emotional fallout of a waning career as it is about any deep-seated beliefs.”

In the end, even after lamenting that, “no one’s ever going to say, ‘F–k Prince,’” as he considers his checkered legacy, Rock triples down on his divisive nature in a most Trump-ian fashion. “I don’t care,” he maintains as Peisner tries to suggest that maybe he actually cares a lot what people think of him. “No, I don’t. You don’t understand. I really don’t give a f–k.”

So, after insisting that the writer watch a series of performance videos before allowing him to leave, the chat ends with Rock asking Peisner for a favor. “Just write the most horrific article about me,” says the tipsy host. “Do it. It helps me.”