Kid Rock is firing back at critics who accused him of lip-syncing during Turning Point USA’s halftime show.
After social media lit up with claims that his performance of “Bawitdaba” didn’t match the video feed, the rocker took to X to shut it down.
“My halftime performance was pre-recorded but performed live. No lip-syncing like the haters and fake news are trying to report. When they synced the cameras to my performance on ‘Bawitdaba,’ it did not line up as I explain in this video,” Kid Rock wrote.
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In an accompanying video, he made it clear that the controversy was because of a production glitch — not a faked performance.
“That song is chaos,” he began to explain. “The first thing is, if I was ever going to lip-sync — which I wouldn’t — that would be the last song I would ever have to bring in the fold to do it to. We performed this song every night on tour since 1998, since the day it was released. So the Turning Point event, they sent me a first cut [after] we taped it, my comment was, ‘the sync is off.’ They were trying to line up … It was very difficult for them, because somebody clearly wasn’t super familiar with the song … It could have been done had we had more time.”
Turning Point USA streamed on YouTube at the same time as the Super Bowl halftime show featuring Bad Bunny.
Kid Rock — a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump — shared the stage with country stars Lee Brice, Brantley Gilbert and Gabby Barrett.
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Within hours, clips of the performance were circulating online, with critics claiming the rock veteran wasn’t singing live.
Kid Rock says that narrative is flat-out wrong.
“So I have nothing but good things to say — not only about Turning Point, but the production team that they work with,” he continued. “Nobody’s perfect, gets it right every time. But for the haters and the trolls out there, that’s exactly what happened. And by the way, most of you know this … Some of you in the entertainment world can look at that and be like, ‘oh, the sync is off.’ But they had to lie and say, ‘Oh, he was lip-syncing.’ And then the problem is people amplify this all over the internet. And I know most people don’t even care, but there’s certain people just keep repeating it, so people think it’s a fact.”
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“And this goes on on both sides,” he added. “They did it to Bad Bunny, in his defense, when they were saying he said ‘You have four months to learn Spanish.’ He was on ’Saturday Night Live,’ I think he was joking. But they do it far too often, especially in the fake news media.”
He doubled down during a previous appearance on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” after host Laura Ingraham described the performance as “out of whack.”
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“It was out of sync,” Kid Rock said. “Actually, just to have some fun with the haters. I can’t answer all the trolls, but it’s going to be some fun. My DJ, who actually raps that song with me, he was not lit up.”
“He’s coming to Nashville tonight, flying in. We’re going to do that live in my living room and I’m going to post it tomorrow to show people exactly how this works,” he continued.
If he were actually lip-syncing, he argued, the mistake wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
“It would’ve been super easy to sync it up if it was prerecorded.”
“I’m jumping around the stage like a rabid monkey, rapping my song, and I’m taking breaths, and my DJ is filling in the other parts of it… I even told them when I saw the rough cut, I was like, ‘You guys got to work on that sync. It’s off,'” the musician said.
“It was just a syncing issue that they had, and I know they tried to get it right. It was very difficult,” he added.
