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In fact, the whole Kid Rock white-trash rap thing is the best, most interestingly syncretic thing to happen in music for a long time. The idea is to combine hiphop with Southern rock and country music. As KR says in "American Bad Ass," "I like Johnny Cash and Grandmaster Flash." And he conveys props to George Jones, Hank Williams Jr. and David Allan Coe, among others.
Now, this is glory days for white rappers; everyone from P.O.D. and Papa Roach to Fred Durst and Slipknot have hopped on board. Eminem is the genius of the trend. He's the only white rapper who comes close to the best of the black ones (let's say Snoop and Biggie), and he's got an absolutely unique, I want to say "literary," sensibility: he makes incredibly intense and moving art. And Eminem for those reasons has "credibility"; you will even hear him on black stations. But he's alone where he is, inimitable. Kid Rock is not nearly as good a rapper, and he doesn't have Dr. Dre producing the backing tracks. But he is the defining artist of this moment in American pop music. His History of Rock (Lava/Atlantic) is so good it's a shame and a sin.
See, this idea of credibility is central to hiphop, where the basic esthetic category is "real." The question is not whether what you've made is beautiful or amusing, but whether it really comes off the streets and ends up there. Eminem aside, white folks, no matter how good they are, don't have that kind of credibility, and the whole sad saga of Vanilla Ice (the American Hamlet) is an example of what happens when they try to get it. In fact, one might simply identify black with real and white with fake.
But the real/fake distinction in music tracks class rather than race. And there is a parallel discourse about authenticity in country music. People who really come from the rural South and grew up poor (like Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Ralph Stanley) are the real shit, and they are lionized for it. And just as rap has its toolbox of symbols?gats, chronic, lowriders, gold jewelry, Gucci, Benz, tattoos, and baseball caps?country musicians signal their authenticity with double-wides, Harleys, Ford trucks, leather, tattoos, Hank and Loretta themselves. Check out the symbolic life of Travis Tritt or Aaron Tippin or Montgomery Gentry.
So if you're a white rapper and you want the cred, it's a great idea to drive out to the countryside for it. And even though Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker (like Eminem) are from Detroit, they're obtaining their credibility down-home. In fact, maybe this is all because they're from Detroit. Chocolate City is gonna laugh at your white ass when you start rapping. So say it loud: I'm white and I'm proud. It's a white thing; you wouldn't understand.
On the Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker CDs it's possible to hear the whole history of macho stud American popular music in amazingly coherent and listenable form. You're gonna detect Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Furious Five, Run-DMC, Gene Autry, Aerosmith, Limp Bizkit, Tanya Tucker, maybe even a hint of Muddy Waters. And at last I've found some music to share with my various Mongoloid offspring.
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In re: the history American popular music, the release of Hank Williams Alone with His Guitar (Mercury) makes a serious contribution. You suddenly feel like you are hearing Hank clearly for the first time. His connections to people such as Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson become immediately audible. And considering that these are old demos and radio performances, the quality of the sound and of the performances is remarkable.
Hank Williams was the greatest songwriter of the 20th century, but only seven of these 18 cuts are originals, and only three?"My Bucket's Got a Hole in It," "Honky Tonk Blues" and "Kaw-Liga"?are among his best-known songs. But that just increases your sense of how fresh these recordings sound, and the versions of those three songs here are, believe me or not, superior to the standard recordings. If you've got the 10-CD Complete Hank Williams that Mercury put out in 1998, you've got these recordings. Otherwise, you need them.
And in re: macho studs, it's been quite the month for country records by men. Really, it's almost too damn much, and I apologize in advance for the hyperbole you're about to encounter.
Daryle Singletary is kind of a second-string country star; he's had some minor hits, but he's not one of the more familiar names. That's too bad, because Singletary has perhaps the best male country voice of his generation. He's a kind of anthology of great country singers, alternately suggesting Merle Haggard, George Jones, Vern Gosdin, Keith Whitley, John Anderson. Now and Again (Audium) is a retrospective of his career with a bunch of new material, and it is certainly one of the best trad country albums of the last year or two. Daryle's not always had the strongest songs, but there are a couple of classics here, especially "Note."
Ricky Van Shelton and Aaron Tippin are both great pop country singers who seemed to disappear in the mid-90s. Both of them have big voices with big drawls singing good songs. Tippin's People Like Us (Lyric Street) is his best album, which is saying something. It features semi-novelty tunes like the current single "Kiss This," but also several songs of ravishing beauty, especially "I'd Be Afraid of Losing You."
Shelton's Fried Green Tomatoes (Audium) is rock-solid country delivered with kick-ass attitude. Ricky used to be a hearthrob, but in this reappearance he's gained 50 pounds, shaved his head, grown a nasty little beard and bought a Harley. That's what I'm talking about.
Many times in my storied career, I've tried to like Ray Price, who was Hank's friend and recorded with his band after his death. But I don't. And Prisoner of Love (Justice/Buddha) shows why. This is a gushing album of big pop arrangements in imitation of the 1950s. The version of the Beatles' "In My Life"?a song that sucked from the outset and receives a funereal rendition here?shows you the problem. It is perhaps the low point in the unremittingly depressing history of the species homo sapiens.
Trent Summar & the New Row Mob (VFR) are the kinds of country folks that Uncle Kracker could love. A rowdy-as-a-motherfucker bar band descended from the cult group Hank Flamingo, the New Row Mob works hard and plays hard. I personally love their cover of "It Never Rains in Southern California," although Wanda the Bitch-Goddess of Love (who in addition to being my wife and my sister is my great-aunt on both sides) left me forever when I played it twice in succession. She came back, though, when I stuck on "Be So Blue," which sounds something like Fine Young Cannibals.
Tony Stampley is the son of the 70s/80s country star Joe Stampley, who hooked up with Moe Bandy on a number of hit duets. Tony himself is country as the day is long, and takes up an honorable place as a redneck anticomputer Luddite from hell on the single "American Offline," in which he recommends laying off the fucking keyboard and going fishing. Stampley's main influence seems to be Hank Jr., but Rebelution (Tri-Chord) has the kind of energy that Hank Jr. himself seems to lack lately. Nothing is cooler or kitschier than a truly gratuitous country gospel song, and "Dr. Jesus" may be the most gratuitous ever recorded, right up there with Rebecca Lynn Howard's "Jesus, Daddy, and You."
David Gray maybe is not a country artist at all, and he's certainly not as manly as Tony Stampley. The style of White Ladder (ATO) might be described as traditional folk music with hyper-contemporary production values. That might sound irritating, but in fact it's truly lovely, nowhere more than on "Babylon," which is in heavy rotation on MTV2. The closest comparison is Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball, one of the best albums of the last decade.
One aspect of what's called alt.country is that it retains rough edges in playing and production. For a while, it was too damn rough in my opinion, and bands like Bad Livers were fun and enthusiastic but just didn't play their instruments well enough to be making records. But the bands are improving, as is demonstrated by the new record from the Livers' Austin compatriots the Gourds, Bolsa de Agua (Sugar Hill). Suddenly, instead of sounding like bad bluegrass, this sounds like serious and solid and good American music. But the enthusiasm and even the rough edges are still there. You can't have art without craft (no, sorry, you really can't), and these people got it now. The songs are basically rock tunes played on bluegrass instruments (especially mandolin), but there are forays into Celtic, Tex-Mex and elsewhere, and some truly lovely and well-played songs, notably "O-Rings."
Here's how a song becomes a classic. You hear it maybe 10 or 15 times on the radio. Maybe you hate it, then slowly forget it as the years become decades. Then 20 years later, one way or another, it comes back around. Now it sounds perfect, inevitable; you're anticipating every little lick and flourish. Memories come flooding back: where you were driving, who you were fucking, whatever. It's a classic.
I sort of despised Ronnie Milsap as MOR in the 70s and 80s. But there's no denying what's happened to the songs on 40 #1 Hits (Virgin) (yes, that's 40). Songs like "Smoky Mountain Rain" sound damn good and take me on a sentimental journey to when I was a little baby farmer, sitting on my mama/sister's knee. Plus Ronnie, born blind and dirt poor, has an immensely compelling biography. I thought he was like dead or something. But I guess not, because there are two decent new tracks on this thing. So if he's back, he's welcome.
Next time: Terri Clark sings Mary Chapin Carpenter and the incomparable Patty Loveless sings whatever she wants and you buy her record.