Kid Rock's NAACP Award Sparks Controversy

Frederick Breedon/Getty

Kid Rock is set to receive an award from the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, but many members of the NAACP are protesting the group's decision to honor the singer. Rock, who will receive the organization's Great Expectations Award at the chapter's Freedom Fund dinner in May, is being criticized by several NAACP members for his frequent use of Confederate flag imagery in his concerts.

Photos: Kid Rock's Birthday Concert

Adolph Mongo, the head of Detroiters For Progress and a boycotting NAACP member, told the Detroit News that Rock's use of the flag is "a slap in the face of anyone who fought for civil rights in this country."

Photos: Backstage With Kid Rock

In an interview with the Guardian in 2008, Rock said that while he is aware of the flag's negative connotations, he mostly uses it to get across a certain attitude on stage. "To me it just represents pride in southern rock'n'roll music, plus it just looks cool," he said.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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