Kid Rock dropped the tracklist for his first Christian album on Thursday, October 1, and one name on it stopped people cold.
Track three is called “7 Sins,” and it features Eminem.
The two Detroit-area artists sit on opposite ends of the American political spectrum, and neither has been quiet about it. Kid Rock has spent years campaigning for Donald Trump. Eminem endorsed Kamala Harris and introduced Barack Obama at a Detroit rally in 2024.
Complex confirmed the feature with a representative from Eminem’s team, so it is real.
He Explained the Decision in the Album’s Foreword
Kid Rock did not let the collaboration speak for itself. He wrote about it directly in the record’s foreword.
“I’m proud of the guests who joined me, especially my old friend Eminem,” he wrote. “His verse speaks to something we’ve talked about and that really needs to be heard: we differ politically and on other things, but we’ve stayed friends through it all.”
Then came the part he clearly wanted people to sit with.
“We hope that sets an example for people who’ve lost friends or stopped talking to family because they think differently.”
The Music Universe reported that the track was intended specifically to highlight the importance of maintaining a personal friendship despite differing political views. That framing came from Kid Rock. Eminem has not publicly commented on the collaboration, and no statement from his camp has explained the nature of the recording beyond confirming it is genuine.
The Friendship Goes Back Nearly Thirty Years
This is not two strangers meeting in a studio to make a point.
Eminem appeared on “Fuck Off,” a track from Kid Rock’s 1998 breakthrough album Devil Without a Cause. Kid Rock returned the favor fifteen years later with a cameo in the video for Eminem’s 2013 single “Berzerk.” Both men came up out of the same Detroit scene, and the friendship predates the current political era by roughly two decades.
Kid Rock said something similar back in 2024, weeks before the last presidential election.
For You
“I love Eminem,” he wrote in a social media post. “We’ve been friends for many years. I don’t agree with his politics, but I do give credit to him and people like Taylor Swift for standing up and not being afraid to be vocal for that which they believe.”
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He said that at the height of a campaign season, about a man who had publicly campaigned against his own candidate. Two years later, he put him on a gospel record.
Not Everyone Took It Well
The announcement landed hard with parts of both fanbases.
Some Eminem listeners publicly objected, citing Kid Rock’s ties to Trump, and a number of posts on social platforms and Reddit described removing his music from playlists. The reaction was sharp enough to generate its own coverage within a day.
None of that changed anything about the record. The track is still on the album, and the album is still coming.
Whatever anyone thinks of either man’s politics, the idea underneath the collaboration is harder to argue with. Two people disagreed for years, stayed in each other’s lives anyway, and made something together at the end of it. That used to be ordinary.
The Album Arrives October 17
Halfway 2 Jesus comes out October 17 through Kid Rock’s own Top Dog Records. It runs 17 tracks and marks the first faith album of his career, along with his first new release since 2022.
The lead single, “James 1:17 (Jesus Is King),” is out now. Its video was filmed at his honky-tonk in Nashville and dedicated to Kalvin Lynch, a fan living with an inoperable condition, and to Jimmie Bones, the founding keyboardist of his Twisted Brown Trucker Band, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2024.
Kid Rock said he wrote the record in the styles he knows. “So I decided to write the songs that I kind of wanted to celebrate Jesus and my faith with, which are rock and roll, country, hip-hop.”
Nobody has heard “7 Sins” yet. For now, all anyone has is a title, a feature credit, and a man explaining why he called an old friend who votes differently from him.
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