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The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, the King of The South and a Cowboy (Baby!) walk into a recording studio. No, that's not the setup to a very strange joke, it's reality! Feast your ears on one of the stranger collaborative cuts to come across our computer in quite a while: Mary J. Blige's "Care," featuring the vocal talents of Kid Rock and the rapping acumen of T.I.
Determining who's sound was going to be prevalent on the track was probably the biggest question faced by these three artists. Would it be Kid's bombastic Dixie rap-rock? Mary's elegant R&B? T.I.'s hard-hitting hip-hop? The answer is none of the above, or all at once. Which makes the song sound delightfully like Lenny Kravitz's "It Ain't Over Til It's Over."
Only sort of kidding! The track has the same kind of gorgeous string arrangement and strolling groove as Kravitz's classic. Mary leads things off, singing, as she is wont to do, about "trials and tribulations." Then T.I. drops a very serviceable verse about how the devil keeps enticing him, keeping his voice low to the ground. But really, this is Kid Rock's chance to take the cake, and the American Bad Ass comes through in a big way during the track's finale.
Check out Mary J. Blige, Kid Rock and T.I.'s "Care," below.
+ Listen to Kid Rock, featuring Mary J. Blige and T.I., "Care," here