Motown Motormouths

By Christopher John Farley/Royal Oak, Mich.

In the grand tradition of Puff Daddy, Kid Rock is sitting at his kitchen table in his small house in Royal Oak, a Detroit suburb, doing what hip-hop moguls are supposed to do: field phone calls. O.K., perhaps it isn't that grand a tradition, and maybe Kid Rock isn't exactly a hip-hop mogul yet--but he's certainly making a run at it. His new album, Devil Without a Cause (Atlantic/Lava), is in the Billboard Top 10. Alongside the messages on his refrigerator door about his six-year-old son Junior's field trips (Kid Rock is a single dad) are notes like FLY TO L.A. FOR LENO/MTV. Supermodels and limo companies are calling, offering their services. Right now he's talking to a recently won-over fan: his mom. "It's www.kidrock. com," he says, directing her to his website so she can follow his hot career more closely. "There's no space between the kid and the rock. One word."

And one city: Detroit. A few years ago, white rapper was almost an oxymoron. In the Motor City, however, a kind of groundswell is under way. In the past few weeks Kid Rock, smarty-pants rapper Eminem and the horror-hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse--all from the Detroit area--have scored Top 10 CDs.

The 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.

So why is 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.

Detroit's reputation as a tough, working-class city also gives its performers credibility in the rap world. Eminem's bad-boy poses on his album The Slim Shady LP (Aftermath/Interscope) seem more believable because he hails from the Detroit area rather than, say, Palo Alto, Calif.

Kid 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 in his career, Kid Rock was challenged by a young Marshall Mathers--who would eventually become Eminem--to a battle rap. (He declined.) Kid Rock eventually signed with Atlantic/Lava. MTV embraced Devil Without a Cause, and he soon found himself trying on swimsuits with Rebecca Romijn-Stamos on House of Style.

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."

Kid Rock admits that now that he's a star, he gets more attention because he's white. However, he argues, his color was an impediment when he was an unknown looking for respect. "There's no way to deny you do get a whole lot more support just for being white," he says. "I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong. But the climb [to the top] is twice as hard." Still, the specter of rock-'n'-roll's shift in the '50s from black to white haunts hip-hop.

In a garage practice space a short trip from Kid Rock's house (he drives his secondhand Cadillac to get there), the rising star holds a rehearsal with his band. A few days later he appears on The 1999 MTV Movie Awards and delivers a wildly invigorating performance of his rap-metal single, Bawitdaba. Swaggering onto the stage, Kid Rock grabs a mike offered to him by Joe C. (a 3-ft. 9-in. rapper who works as his backup) and screams, "My name is Kiiiiiiiid...Rock!" If he has his way, not long from now he won't need an introduction.