He's been a cowboy and a pimp and an American bad-ass, but now Kid Rock is just plain Cocky: it's nice to know that fame, fortune and the envy of millions have allowed him to be the proper rock star he's always wanted to be. There's no real change from his breakthrough album Devil Without a Cause, then; Cocky is another hard-partying mix of hard rock and hip-hop, backed once again by his Twisted Brown Truckers (including DJ and star-in-his-own-right Uncle Kracker). If anything, the Kid's now taken his act farther South, mixing in the delta blues (no really, it's there in "Drunk in the Morning"), country music (realising, quite rightly, that one can never have too much pedal-steel guitar) and Dixie-fried rock (he even samples Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" on "You Never Met a Motherfucker Quite Like Me"). And, at times, the Kid even starts to act his age, though we all always knew he'd grow old disgracefully. So while for the most part the lyrics still follow the same themes (women, booze, money, his general greatness), there are glimpses of genuine introspection that leak through on songs such as "Picture" (with, of all people, Sheryl Crow) and "Lonely Load of Faith". It doesn't stick, though; once a Kid, always a Kid. Fortunately, there's nobody who does it better than him. --Robert Burrow