Kid Rock admitted that his performance for Turning Point USA’s rival Super Bowl halftime show was prerecorded, following speculations that he was lip-syncing.
TPUSA announced that it would put on an alternative show during Apple Music’s Super Bowl halftime show, as conservatives criticized the NFL for selecting Bad Bunny as the performer. Bad Bunny, whose legal name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has criticized the use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We’re here to address the fake news media and all the trolls that are piling on, trying to say I was lip syncing on the Turning Point USA Bawitdaba,” Kid Rock said at the beginning of a video he posted on X.
Kid Rock argued that he was not lip-syncing but that problems syncing the audio together made it appear that he was.
“Because we were rapping it. That song takes so much energy,” he said. “I know these guys had a difficult time syncing it together, so I have nothing but good things to say, not only about Turning Point, but also the production team they work with.”
“[Turning Point USA production] top notch, first class all the way. Nobody is perfect or gets it right every time,” he added.
TPUSA’s All-American Halftime show featuring Kid Rock drew in 6.1 million concurrent viewers on its YouTube channel on Sunday night.
Kid Rock said the song he performed, “Bawitdaba,” would be the “last song” he would ever lip-sync if he ever did.
“If I was ever going to lip sync, which I wouldn’t, that would be the last song that I would ever have to bring into the fold to do it to,” he said. “We’ve performed the song every night on tour since 1998, since the day it was released.”
He said Turning Point USA sent him a first cut of the live performance, and he flagged that the video’s sync was off. Kid Rock said it was “difficult” for TPUSA because the person editing the video “wasn’t familiar” with the song.
“First off, if we would’ve recorded it and played it like we lip-synced it, it would’ve been pie, it would’ve been pie lined up. It was very difficult for them because somebody wasn’t super familiar with the song,” he said.
He added that if TPUSA had more time, the audio problems could have been fixed.
“Now it’s extremely difficult for them to line up the sync; it could’ve been done if we had more time. I’m confident that they could’ve gotten it right, but we only got to see one edit, and I didn’t think it was the end of the world,” he said.
Kid Rock addressed the “haters” who have speculated about his performance and suggested he was lip-syncing by giving them the middle finger.
“For the haters and the trolls out there, that’s exactly what happened,” he said. “By the way, most of you know this if you have any inclination, some of you that are in the entertainment world, you can look at that and be like ‘oh the sync is off,’ but no, they had to lie and say ‘he was lip syncing.’”
He said both sides spread misinformation about artists, saying the same thing happened to Bad Bunny when he joked that audiences had four months to learn Spanish.
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“He was on Saturday Night Live, I think he was joking,” he said. “But they do it far too often in the fake news media, in the left-wingers, the crazy libtards.”
At the end of the video, Kid Rock advertised his Freedom 250 tour, with tickets going on sale on Friday.
