Kid Rock’s first Christian album has a big choir on it, and the voices in that choir belong to his own singers.
An AI program is what made them sound like so many more.
“It’s all my singers, but we’re stacking them, and it sounds like this great choir,” he told The Detroit News.
The program is Suno. In an interview with Billboard, Kid Rock revealed that he used the AI music tool on Halfway 2 Jesus, mostly to create full choir arrangements and some orchestrations. The album is out Oct. 17 on his own Top Dog Records, and it is his 13th album and his first Christian one, following 2022’s Bad Reputation.
Suno also beefed up songs such as the instrumental opener “Freedom” and “7 Sins,” the track where Lil Wayne took over the guest spot first announced for Eminem. He used AI for the album cover and his new merch as well. Most of the record was cut at his Dixie Ridge Studios with Nashville session musicians and members of his Twisted Brown Trucker band.
Kid Rock Called AI ‘Another Tool’ Before It Ever Touched Halfway 2 Jesus
Kid Rock’s view of AI goes back further than this album. Before he made it, he served as a judge when the science and technology channel Core Memory challenged AI to make a believable country song. He called the finished track “average,” and he said that if AI ever copied him well enough to make a hit Kid Rock song, he would be open to performing it live.
“I hope somebody nails one. If you nail one, I’ll give you a piece of it,” he said in a conversation for Core Memory.
In that same conversation, he called AI “another tool.” He said he sees it the way he would see it using different samples, a way to get what he hears in his head to his audience without the AI writing the song. He wrote most of the material himself, with co-writers including Uncle Kracker and John Eddie.
He explained the process in plain studio terms. He can walk in, play his guitar, and make it sound like a keyboard or a string section, and Suno takes what he is hearing and puts it together into something orchestral. For the bulk of the songs, he said, the band is on there, playing together.
He also has an answer for anyone who thinks a program like this spells the end of real music, and it goes back to his own childhood.
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“As a kid, I grew up using drum machines… and when that came out, they said, ‘oh, it’s going to ruin music!’ They say that about everything,” he said.
A man who grew up on drum machines has heard this argument before.
Kid Rock Pays His Own Way and Admits AI Could Become a Problem Down the Line
For Kid Rock, the cost of a record is personal because the money is his. He once told BMI that starting his own record company taught him how the business works, and that he studied the great independent labels and taught himself to play several instruments. He still runs Top Dog, and he still pays the production costs on his own records.
That is where Suno earns its place in the studio. He sees AI as a way to save money and time. Bad Reputation cost about $200,000 to make, and The Detroit News reported that Halfway 2 Jesus will likely cost about the same.
RELATED: Kid Rock Says ‘They’ Want Songs Cut From Halfway 2 Jesus, and He Gave a One-Word Answer
The other side of the argument has numbers too. A Kapwing study found that two AI country “artists,” Breaking Rust and Cain Walker, made just under $750,000 from Spotify and YouTube listenership alone.
Kid Rock does not brush that worry aside. He has said the program helps him get his own sound across, and in the same breath, he admitted nobody knows yet where it leads.
“I agree it can be a huge problem down the line. I think it’s to be determined,” he told Billboard.
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