Kid Rock has had a chart-topping 15-year career, and along the way he’s taken hundreds of unforgettable breaths. Picking the top seven is a tough task, but luckily we have the man himself to talk us through the breaths that loom largest in his mind. And we’re gonna let him take it away:
7. April 9, 2000
“I can still remember the way my chest felt when it inflated with air—not too fast, not too slow. I was wearing a blue shirt, and the inhale was 80/20 nostrils to mouth. It was probably around 9:45 p.m., during the ‘get in the pit and try to love someone’ part of ‘Bawitdaba.’ I was playing Nemo’s in my hometown of Detroit, just blowing off some steam. The truth is, this breath was crucial for me to continue singing. Crucial.”
6. August 21, 2000
“It was the first day of shooting Joe Dirt, and I was extremely nervous. Rockin’ it hard onstage in front of 80,000 people is no problem, but being on camera totally freaked me out. So, I’m by the craft services table hyperventilating, and David Spade walks over to me and says, ‘You’re doing good, Kid. Just breathe.’ And the first breath I took after that, the breath David Spade instructed me to take, that one was special.”
5. June 2, 1998
“I usually let the backup singers take the refrains in ‘Bawitdaba’ so I can rest my lungs, but at Warped Tour ’98 in Columbus, I joined in on the second one. I don’t even know why I did—I was just feeling it, and I had been having a really good breathing day all around. My breath was pretty much shredded from rapping during the verse, so I was running low on oxygen, but I did it anyway. That’s just the way I do. That first breath following that chorus felt so crisp, so right. A reward for giving the fans all of me. I’ll never forget it.”
4. October 19, 1983
“I think everyone remembers at least one amazing breath from their childhood. I was 12, riding the bus on the way to school. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Gimme Three Steps’ came on the radio and inspired me to breathe deeper than I ever had before. That breath was so formative for me that I chose the stage name ‘Kid,’ so I would never forget that important period of my life.”
3. December 12, 2001
“This one I took at, like, 3 a.m., staying up late with Uncle Kracker. We couldn’t sleep because the rhymes kept coming to us. It was right before I came up with the hook to ‘Follow Me,’ which would go on to be his biggest single. A lot of people don’t know I wrote a good portion of that song. I never could have done it without that breath.”
2. January 15, 2011
“This is around the time I moved from a rap/rock sound to more of a hard country sound to follow the trends. Originally I was worried about how I would make the switch, but then I realized if I made different breaths, I could make different sounds come out. I was onstage with Sheryl Crow, and I realized that I had successfully captured the new breath style—I had made it.”
1. July 4, 2014
“Sometimes I’m truly myself when I’m out driving on a long stretch of highway in my restored 1968 Chevy Camaro, with no one to answer to but myself. I had just shifted into third gear, and this cool bird was kind of flying next to the car, kind of like we were partners, out there on the open road. Warriors. The breath before had been pretty underwhelming, so I was totally not expecting this amazing breath to pop into my lungs out of nowhere. Definitely my best breath of all time.”
Agree with Kid’s list? Disagree? Tweet us your picks for Kid Rock’s best breath of all time. We can’t wait to see what breaths Kid Rock will have in the future.
