Review: Where was DOGE when Kid Rock needed them?

America has never met a dude quite like Kid Rock.

Rabidly redneck, staunchly Republican, outspokenly anti-woke, seamlessly rock ‘n’ rap, wildly popular and totally polarizing.

Most music stars keep their politics to a minimum in concert. Kid Rock is a maximalist — when it comes to almost everything. He invites — and welcomes — extreme reactions. That’s the way he rolls.

Inside Kid Rock’s Saturday night show at Target Center, at times, it felt like a de facto MAGA rally. The crowd was boisterous and rowdy, with 9,000 people bursting into spontaneous “USA” chants a couple times. Truth be told, camo ball caps outnumbered MAGA headwear, and Harley Davidson gear was almost as common as Kid Rock T-shirts.

As always, Kid Rock was patriotic and pro-troops. Live wire opening act Chris Janson, a country singer known for the 2015 hit “Buy Me a Boat,” was like a MAGA hype man, peppering his songs and patter with red-pleasing rhetoric. But Kid Rock pretty much confined his messages to recorded videos.

A video saluting soldiers and first responders preceded “Born Free,” during which a mammoth American flag unfurled onstage amid fireworks as Kid Rock bellowed this 2010 heartland rocker as if trying to channel the voice of his fellow Michigander Bob Seger.

Afterward, a video of President Donald Trump came on the arena’s big screens, as he spoke about how we love freedom, how this Minneapolis crowd was the most patriotic in rock history (he wasn’t even there, though he said he wish he had been) and how Kid Rock is “as good as it gets.”

Mr. As Good As It Gets then tore into his most political and vitriolic tune, 2022’s “We the People.” During the song, photos of former President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and, for a local touch, Gov. Tim Walz appeared on the giant screens as Kid Rock railed about COVID-19 protocols, the Biden administration, mainstream media and Black Lives Matter.

At song’s end, a MAGA banner unfolded where the American flag had been earlier, and a photo of MAGA potentates Trump and Elon Musk along with UFC head honcho Dana White appeared on screen to a rambunctious reaction. All that was missing was MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a star of Trump’s rally at this same Target Center in 2019.

There were protesters Saturday night outside Target Center, just as there had been at Kid Rock’s tour kickoff a night earlier in Omaha, a purple city in a certifiably red state. In Omaha, the protesters were anti-MAGA. In blue Minneapolis, the protesters were pro-Jesus.

Enough about the politics. Let’s talk about the music. It was a slick, energetic and bombastic two-hour display of crowd-invigorating rap ‘n’ rock with a taste of country. There were lasers, confetti, fireworks, fog blasters, flamethrowers, red carpeting on the stage and five different hats for Kid Rock (mostly a black leather fedora but also a purple ball cap with Prince’s glyph).

The showboatingly versatile Kid Rock — who played guitar, piano, drums and turntables — was accompanied by eight musicians, three backup singers (including Twin Cities residents Shannon Curfman and Kat Perkins) and two female dancers, who, at one point, utilized poles displaying American flags as props for their shimmying and shaking.

In his first Twin Cities appearance since 2022, in front of a half full arena, Kid Rock, 54, seemed more pro forma than passionate, lacking his occasional goofy humor. Some of his raps like 1998’s “Devil Without a Cause” and 2001’s “Cocky” (“I got more money than Matchbox Twenty”) sounded outdated, but then it’s all about the braggadocio, especially 2002’s galvanizing “You Never Met a [Expletive] Quite Like Me.”

“First Kiss,” from 2015, was such a blatant attempt at a pop radio hit that it felt forced and too PG for Kid Rock. The 2002 hit country duet “Picture,” delivered Saturday with Perkins (wearing a Prince T-shirt), showed Kid Rock at his songwriting best. However, the ensuing cover of the Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton classic “Islands in the Stream” (with singing drummer Stefanie Eulinberg) as well as a later solo acoustic guitar rendition of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” demonstrated the shortcomings of Kid Rock’s raspy singing voice.

He was more effective on rockers like a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll,” as well as his own “Only God Knows Why” from 1999, which built into a gospely rave-up, and the strutting “Bad Reputation,” the title track of his 2022 album.

By the end of the long, 20-tune night, it was obvious that Kid Rock could have used someone from the DOGE to curtail his excesses.