Kid Rock Tickets

Known by stage name Kid Rock, Robert James Ritchie was born on January 17, 1971 in Romeo Michigan and grew up in a small rural town north of the Detroit metro area. Finding small-town life repressively dull, he immersed himself in rap music. He started off his career at the age of 11 when he danced at a mall for a fun. Ritchie learned to break dance, and embarked on making the talent-show rounds in Detroit. Today he is a widely accepted American musician and actor and has sold over 23 million albums since the release of his debut album Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast in 1990.

Inspired by the Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill - who produced music fusing rap and hard guitar rock -- Kid Rock recorded his first demos in 1988. He eventually scored an opening slot at a Boogie Down Productions gig. He then signed a contract with Jive Records, which released Kid Rock's debut album, Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast.

The album was considered a heavily derivative of Licensed to Ill. Ritchie briefly became notorious when a radio station aired the album's profanity-laced ode to oral sex and was fined over $20,000. Jive didn't see much of a future for Rock and dropped him from their roster. Rock was never one to back away from a fight. He scrapped and scraped to make a living out of music before he finally found success at age 27. Ritchie has had the success out with a certain ex-wife and even the ex-husband of his ex-wife as documented in countless gossip rags.

Rock went on to sell millions of records worldwide with an amazing mix of Southern rock, blues- and country-tinged ballads, and hip-hop. His on-again, off-again engagement and marriage to Anderson, and their eventual break-up also kept him alive in the show business gossips.

Ritchie is characterized for playing a bunch of instruments competently and writing all his own music, even though his influences are often transparent. On his new album, the reasonably titled 'Rock N Roll Jesus' (Atlantic), he begins his video with a shotgun marriage between Warren Zevon's 'Werewolves of London' and Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Sweet Home Alabama' on the melancholic 'All Summer Long'.

The music of his new album is the usual mix of guitar ranch and stoned country laments from the eight-track cassette era. Kid Rock can be a crazy boogie monster in one song, a dead-earnest balladeer in the other. But in the spirit of working-class rockers from the great state of Michigan, he doesn't believe music should be complicated. Rock is sincere without being sanctimonious. His attitude is live and let live.

After a decade of trying, Rock was a superstar receiving a Top Five, seven-times-platinum album and a gig at Woodstock '99. In the later years of his career, he would go even further into country-style guitar rock, but with better songs. The Hank Williams Jr. duet 'Cadillac Pussy' and a cover of Bad Company's 'Feel like Makin' Love' helped him to break to prominence. A Murder City madman with Pabst Blue Ribbon in his veins, Kid Rock will certainly remain a Star on sheer momentum.