Kid Rock released Rebel Soul on November 19, 2012, through Top Dog/Atlantic. For his ninth studio album, he returned to producing himself and brought his touring band, Twisted Brown Trucker, into the sessions. The 14-track record ranged across rock, soul, country and hip-hop, with the guitar-heavy military tribute “Let’s Ride” serving as its lead single.
Rock had a specific idea of how those different sides should fit together. He told Maxim that he thought of the record as “a greatest-hits album, but with all new songs.” He wanted to revisit the sounds of his earlier work while writing from an older perspective. That gave him room for both the hometown celebration of “Detroit, Michigan” and the deliberately outrageous hip-hop of “Cucci Galore.”
The latter song made the change in approach especially clear. For 2010’s Born Free, producer Rick Rubin had steered Rock toward a more focused country-rock record. The New Yorker reported that Rubin had rejected “Cucci Galore,” a song about the Playboy Mansion. Rock included it on Rebel Soul, restoring a kind of material that hadn’t fitted the previous album’s direction.
The recording process also grew out of his regular working life with the band. In a December 2012 interview with Music Connection, Rock explained that they were rehearsing for shows at the Warehouse while his AllenRoadHouse studio was being rebuilt. Recording equipment was already stored at the rehearsal space, and the musicians were trying out new songs to hear how they worked live. He decided to connect the gear and record them. He estimated that about 80 percent of those recordings ended up being used as basic tracks.
He carried a useful lesson from Rubin into those sessions: give musicians room to play, and resist polishing away the feeling of a performance. Rock still wanted to develop distinctive guitar and keyboard parts, but he was careful about excessive editing in Pro Tools. His aim was to combine more detailed arrangements with the spontaneity he had learned to value while making Born Free.
That return to familiar musicians came with a direct salute to familiar surroundings. “Detroit, Michigan,” the album’s fourth track, celebrated the city’s musical and automotive history. Its introduction to listeners was unusually local: Pure Michigan premiered the song on the state’s official tourism website on November 5, 2012. It remained an exclusive preview there until the album’s release, connecting the record’s hometown theme to the campaign promoting the state.
The release also changed how fans could buy his music. Rebel Soul ended Rock’s long resistance to selling his albums through iTunes. In Billboard’s November 2012 cover story, he explained that his objections to the store’s pricing hadn’t disappeared, but convenience and getting music to listeners had become decisive. The album was offered for preorder in October, and individual tracks were available to purchase. For Atlantic, those download figures also provided information it could use when deciding which songs to promote to radio.
His Atlantic back catalog followed on January 15, 2013. Earlier releases including Devil Without a Cause, Cocky and Born Free became available on iTunes alongside Rebel Soul.
