I got to know Rock in the late ’90s, in the days before he had hits and Pam Anderson. He was a Waffle House guy then, as he is now, celebrity marriage or not. We drove around his native Detroit in a $2000 vintage Coupe de Ville convertible with the top down. Rock was at the wheel with a burgundy derby on his head, a sleeveless white T-shirt on his pale torso, and a 40-ounce malt liquor between his thighs.

He owned a brick bungalow in a blue-collar suburb, where he lived with his then 5-year-old son, and we drove to his dingy studio in a bombed-out section of Detroit, where he was greeted like a minor local celebrity. He had headlined a string of sold-out local shows and had self-released countless records over the previous decade, but he was barely known outside of Michigan.