Kid Rock – 'Halfway 2 Jesus' review: faith album with Eminem flops at Paste
Kid Rock's Christian album has 17 songs, with Eminem and Lil Wayne as guests. Paste editor-in-chief Matt Mitchell pans the record without giving a score.
Photo: Eva Rinaldi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Single video: YouTube · Kid Rock · youtube.com
Single: James 1:17 (Jesus Is King)
Kid Rock released his Christian album 'Halfway 2 Jesus', with 17 songs, on 17 October. The first single was 'James 1:17 (Jesus Is King)'. Eminem raps on 'Heal My Faith', Lil Wayne on '7 Sins', and Rascal Flatts' Gary LeVox and Jimmie Allen sing on the title track. In the album's foreword, Kid Rock writes of Eminem: 'we differ politically and on other things, but we've stayed friends through it all.' Eminem said of the collaboration: 'Not about choosing sides, just choosing to make music with my old friend.'
Paste editor-in-chief Matt Mitchell is scathing: 'Halfway 2 Jesus is a bad album.' The arrangements are generic gospel rock, the lyrics shallow and fixated on Kid Rock himself, and even the rap passages are weak. The real problem, he argues, is not the musician's politics but a lack of talent.
Mitchell finds the best moment in 'Procession', a roughly three-minute orchestral piece without Kid Rock's vocals. The video is the official music video for 'James 1:17 (Jesus Is King)' from the musician's channel.