Machine Gun Kelly’s house in LA is the sort of place that makes it a shame they don’t do MTV Cribs any more. A gothic-style mansion arranged around a huge central staircase, the place is decorated with ornate chandeliers and elaborate tapestries, but there are plenty of clues that this is a young man’s bachelor pad. One room, which looks out onto the swimming pool, is given over to a hoop-shooting basketball arcade game, a pool table and a Monster Energy-branded drinks fridge.
He has come a long way since he burst onto the scene in 2011 with a party-rap tune called “Wild Boy” – which has now racked up more than 135 million views on YouTube – and quickly set about living up to that sobriquet. Earlier in the week he celebrated his 29th birthday with a bacchanalian party in Hollywood attended by the likes of Tommy Lee, Pete Davidson and Marilyn Manson, who presented him with the gift of a dildo with Manson’s own face on it. Obviously.
Yet for all his hard-partying ways, Machine Gun Kelly is difficult to pigeonhole. Sure, on the one hand he’s a 6ft 4in bleach-haired rapper from Cleveland, Ohio, who has beefed with Eminem, but he has also enjoyed pop success, collaborating with Camila Cabello on “Bad Things” (409m Spotify plays). As an actor (he performs under his real name, Colson Baker), he had a break-out role this year playing to type as fellow wild boy – and new friend – Tommy Lee in Netflix’s Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt, yet he’s also a doting father to his ten-year-old daughter, Casie, and concerned enough about his own health that shortly after we meet he syringes a shot of oregano oil into his mouth. “For every foul thing I put in my body I try to pump something good in there,” he explains. “Especially after the weekend I’ve just had.”
With a fourth album, Hotel Diablo, out now and more acting jobs on the way, including a role alongside Davidson in the comedy Big Time Adolescence, Machine Gun Kelly sits down, sparks up a joint and takes the GQ&A…
Published in British GQ, August 2019. Continue reading at GQ Hype.
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