Rock Music Band
released February 13, 2025
Rolling
Stone review, Rock Music Band
February 13, 2025
Rating: ***** of five
by Peter Travers
Our favorite crunk-rapper-turned-rap-rocker-turned-emo-child-turned-bar-band-turned-indie-singer/songwriter has pulled off yet another rebirth. I'm only one of a legion of those in the music industry who would title Mike Jones a musical virtuoso.
So what would we expect next from him? A prog-rock double album? A Carnegie Hall live symphony? A rubber spring-snake tightly packed in a CD jewel case?
Once again, Mike Jones has made fools (and believers) of us all by going for the norm -- which, in this case, is the unexpected. Rock Music Band, the enigmatic Jones' latest effort, glows with refreshing energy as an album both basking in its own irony and genuinely enjoying what it ostensibly satirizes. The opening track, "Rock Out", is possibly the loudest track ever recorded, actually defying the volume you have set as well as the circuitry and potentiometers inside your stereo to literally blow your roof off. And by "literally", I of course mean "practically."
The rock just keeps on coming with facetious (or are they?) arena anthems "Age of the Rock" and "Blow You Away." As a whole the album disregards convention while simultaneously embracing it, which I guess is sort of like eating your own mouth. What's important is that Mike Jones has once again posted a brilliant album for the annals.
The young man from Houston has truly grown up without relinquishing his childlike wonder of music and life. In a musical landscape where it is cool to be cool, Mike Jones has started out cool and for a while was uncool (although that was likely intentional, thereby making him cool), then got cooler and is now both uncool and cool, which in this musical landscape is both cool and uncool.
Track
listing
1. Rock Out
2. Rock And Roll
3. Age of the Rock
4. Return of the Rock
5. Rock Music Band
6. Blow You Away
7. Breakdown
8. Ironic Cover of Lead Belly
9. Sincere Cover of Lead Belly
10. Rock Party