Eminem’s verse on Kid Rock’s new Christian album sits on track 5, “Heal My Faith,” and not on the song first announced for it. Halfway 2 Jesus arrived on Saturday, October 17, at 10:17 a.m., a time picked to echo its lead single “James 1:17 (Jesus Is King).” The date was also Eminem’s 54th birthday.
The album, released on Kid Rock’s own Top Dog label, runs 17 tracks. Lil Wayne now raps on “7 Sins,” the song that carried the Eminem credit when the tracklist went public on October 1. Gary LeVox of Rascal Flatts and country singer Jimmie Allen join Kid Rock on the title track.
How the Detroit feature changed songs
Kid Rock, born Robert Ritchie, explained the swap in a video he posted on October 14. He first told viewers Eminem was off “7 Sins,” then added: “It’ll probably not make you very happy to hear that Eminem is still on the album. He’s just on another song now, called ‘Heal My Faith.’”
The fuller story came out in interviews he gave to Detroit papers that week. Ritchie said he had offered “Heal My Faith” to Eminem roughly a year earlier, when the song had gone by the working titles “Show Me Love” and “Lord Above.” Eminem cut verses for both songs over the following months, and “7 Sins” made the first running order. Once the list was out, Eminem called and asked when Ritchie had last played the older track, then told him: “I think we should switch songs.” Ritchie agreed and went looking for a replacement on “7 Sins,” approaching Lil Wayne and Chuck D of Public Enemy. Days passed with no answer until Lil Wayne texted back.
Ritchie described the late shuffle as stressful but said he was happy with how it turned out. In the album’s foreword he called Eminem “my old friend,” and in his video he put the friendship at “almost 40 years.”
A verse about where it started
The song surfaced online on October 16, a day ahead of the album. Eminem uses his verse to look back at the pair’s early days in Detroit, with references to the era of his 1997 Slim Shady EP and a release party at the Viper Room. Early listener reaction posted online was largely unkind, with several fans picking at his vocal tone and at the choice to spend a verse on backstory. No producer or songwriter credits for the track had been published in the material Badiyaa reviewed.
For anyone who knows Eminem only from his own albums, the pairing is older than it looks. The paper trail runs like this:
- 1998: Eminem raps on “F*** Off” from Devil Without a Cause, released August 18, 1998, through Lava, Atlantic and Top Dog. That album went on to diamond status, 11 million US copies. The song also appeared on the Strangeland soundtrack in 1999.
- 1999: Kid Rock adds scratching to “Just Don’t Give a F***” on The Slim Shady LP, the major-label breakout for Eminem.
- 2008: Both men appear, alongside the late Proof, on Trick-Trick’s “From the D.”
- 2013: Kid Rock turns up in the music video for “Berzerk,” the lead single from The Marshall Mathers LP 2.
- 2026: “Heal My Faith,” track 5 of Halfway 2 Jesus.
Count from the 1998 record and “Heal My Faith” lands 28 years after their first credited track together. Ritchie’s “almost 40 years” would place the start of the friendship in the late 1980s, roughly a decade before that first record.
Why a Christian record, and why now
Kid Rock has said he grew up Catholic, found church music dull and went hunting for worship songs that sounded like what he actually listened to. In a TV interview in August he said he wrote songs “to celebrate Jesus and my faith with, which are rock ‘n’ roll, country, hip-hop.” He told an interviewer the album is “about forgiveness and second chances,” and he used the AI program Suno for choir arrangements and some orchestral parts.
There is a commercial logic too. His last studio album, Bad Reputation in 2022, peaked at No. 124 on the US albums chart and dropped off a week later. His faith-themed cover of Cody Johnson’s “‘Til You Can’t” did far better this year, opening at No. 1 on the Hot Christian Songs chart with more than 3.7 million streams and 51,000 units, and reaching No. 69 on the Hot 100. “James 1:17 (Jesus Is King)” peaked at No. 26 on that same Christian chart, which makes it the benchmark the full album’s first week will be measured against when chart figures for Halfway 2 Jesus arrive.
Further reading
Image: Randall Chancellor from Austin, TX, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
