Last week, rapper turned actor turned pop-punk musician Colson “Machine Gun Kelly” Baker learned there is such thing as bad press when he took a moment during his Riot Fest set to try and diss Slipknot for being “50 years old, wearing a weird mask onstage.” This prompted Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor to post e-mails proving he turned down a chance to be on MGK’s pop-punk album Tickets to my Downfall, which in turn inspired Baker to tweet that Taylor’s verse was terrible. Now, video has emerged of Baker’s set at this weekend’s Louder Than Life festival, during which he was booed and flipped off by a large amount of the audience.
As you’ll see in the fan-shot video below, Baker took to the stage at the Louder Than Life fest in Louisville, KY, to a chorus of boos and a huge number of middle fingers thrust in the air. Baker did his best to quell the crowd, but eventually took once more to name-calling, telling on audience member, “I see you dude. I see you mad as fuck in your weird fucking outfit. I’m here for the same shit you’re here for…so it’s all good. Clearly, I’m not going nowhere, so just enjoy.” According to a tweet by the audience member’s aunt, the “weird fucking outfit” in question was Slipknot gear.
https://twitter.com/daylisbell/status/1441971360952057858
Here’s the problem with that: Machine Gun Kelly is positioning himself as a punk musician, but that comment — and his comments made about Slipknot — make him sound like every “normal” asshole in the world. Calling out an audience member for wearing a “weird fucking outfit” is pretty antithetical to the spirit of punk, or rock and roll in general. Instead, he just sounda like some high school jock who feels the need to shit on people in order to feel cool. So if Machine Gun Kelly’s goal was to prove he adopted punk as a look without every understanding or caring about what it stood for, he’s doing a bang-up fuckin’ job.
Here are some other fans posting videos and confirming the incident:
https://twitter.com/ThatJoshDude_/status/1441962766567231495
This crowd is at least 60/40 booing @machinegunkelly right now at #Louderthanlife – and the boos are growing louder.
— Pingsteal (@Pingsteal) September 26, 2021
Not sure what was better last night: Seeing Disturbed play a great set or watching the crowd boo the shit outta Machine Gun Kelly for an hour. What a wanker.
— Bags (@JoeyBagOf___) September 26, 2021
In the words of Strapping Young Lad, “Hey, you ironic pop-rock fuck, don’t you fuck with metal.”
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Words by Chris Krovatin
