Machine Gun Kelly, the wild boy himself, hit up Toronto to tear the city apart. The tall and tatted 21-year-old rapper from Cleveland, Ohio sat down with Urbanology Magazine at his hotel, before his meet and greet with fans at New Era, and concert at Sound Academy. In a black “Rager” tee and a backwards snapback, MGK got comfortable on the couch to talk about his “EST 19XX” family, Lace Up Tour, new album and what inspires his music.
MGK has a following unlike most other artists. His fans are die-hard and will do almost anything to make it to his shows. He was reluctant to talk about what the term “Lace Up” means to fans, and his fans’ influence on him, stating that his fans already know it is so much more than a movement.
“I don’t know anyone that has what the f*ck we have right now,” he says. “What we have is 10 times deeper than music. I’ve never seen no shit like this, I don’t even want to insult the kids that truly live and breathe this shit by insulting them and being like, ‘when you’re an artist, and you have a movement, that’s how you know you’ve made it,’ there is no god damned movement outside of this shit. I don’t see shit out here that’s as powerful as this, one of our most hardcore fans didn’t have enough money to travel to see the show and fans Western Union-ed her money so she could go get a passport and she could come out. This shit is a f*cking family, man.”
Ashley Mackay and Cory Kurtzman drove all the way from Halifax just to be able to see their favourite artist perform at Sound Academy. Mackay came across MGK while on YouTube a year ago and introduced Kurtzman to his music. The two friends listen to the wild boy every day so driving the 19 hours from Nova Scotia was worth it.
“With the amount of MGK that we listen to, we couldn’t turn it down,” explains Kurtzman. “His love for his fans is just ridiculous. I’m in the video for “Return”. All his fans did the whole video for him.”
MGK gets to know his fans on a personal level, and says that some of his biggest fans reside in Toronto. “One of the illest tattoos that a fan has is a Toronto native and that’s like the infamous Machine Gun Kelly portrait that’s on the leg. All of my fans know about that tattoo that this guy has and he’s from right here so that’s cool. He told me that he was going to get my face tattooed when I was in Toronto last time. I signed his leg at a show in Ohio that he and his wife travelled down for, and at the Toronto show, afterwards, he pulled his leg up and he had my autograph tattooed on his leg. I was like ‘Oh, that’s sick,’ and he’s like ‘I’m going to get your portrait tattooed in two weeks.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, whatever, you’re just saying that to make me happy right now.’ Low and behold, two weeks later I saw a post and I was like ‘What the f*ck!’”
Everything Machine Gun Kelly does, he does for his fans, many of which inspire him with their stories. Most notable, a wheelchair bound fan with cerebral palsy who stood up for a moment because MGK’s music had inspired him to “lace up” and press on. Addicts are also a large part of his fan base due to the similarities they share, and the content of his music.
“I had another interaction with a heroin addict at a radio station one time, and it was really cool because addicts are a huge part of my fan base just because there are some similarities between their lives and mine but this guy came up and was like ‘I’m 96 days sober because of you,’ and he started bawling his f*cking eyes out man, and it was just one of those moments when you can just tell if someone is genuine or not… This guy was one of those guys that you can just clearly tell has been through some shit and that it truly meant something to him. It was in front of the P[rogram] D[irector] too and it was one of those things where my song was on the border of being picked up for regular rotation. I think that experience went down in my book as one of the best. It was a really cool moment, man.”
Drugs largely influence his lyrical content, but the wild boy says he doesn’t like to talk about it, as he does not want to promote that lifestyle to his fans and make them think that they can’t do anything creative without it. He also says the struggles he went through growing up such as fights and robberies, the struggle to provide for his child and the complicated/non-existent relationships he has with family members inspired him to write powerful songs such as “The Return”.
““The Return” is probably the best song that I will ever write just because it was all those problems that I had summed up in a three-minute song, no chorus, no nothing, just me attacking a microphone. Me and Slim had a huge fight before I wrote the song, I wrote it in a closet in Nashville, Tennessee. “The Return” has got to be my all-time favourite song that I’ve done,” he says.
Before the release of his Lace Up album this summer, MGK will be dropping the Half Naked & Almost Famous EP, which will be a soundtrack to a DVD he’s working on. MGK says that he won’t be switching up his sound in order to sell more records and that fans can expect the same MGK on the album that they’ve heard on his mixtapes. He did promise, however a feature from one of his favourite rappers DMX, and a secret feature that MGK says has never been featured by anyone before.
After the interview, Machine Gun Kelly hit up the New Era hat store for a meet and greet with fans before his show at Sound Academy. Toronto artists C-Flowz, The 6th Letter and Loonie Blue opened the show before Bad Boy Records artist Los performed his opening set. The other artists’ performances were hype, but it was obvious who the audience came to see. MGK hit the stage with an intense energy and stage presence, as the crowd screamed, chanted and started mosh pits. He threw water into the crowd, mooned the audience jumped on his drum set, and jumped into the audience, spitting tracks from his mixtapes and doing a cover of Blink 182’s “What’s My Age Again?” which fit the punk-rock energy of his performance. He brought a female fan onstage to undress to his hit, “Wild Boy”, which closed off the show. He made it obvious to the fans how much he cares about them, and gave them a show they won’t soon forget.
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