MGK: Road to Forgiveness
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Is this thing on? Hi, babies. Welcome back to season eight. Today, I have a triple threat. I mean, I don't even know. I think he might be a quadruple threat, but this man needs no introduction.

Mr. MGK in the house, baby. Hello. Hi, everybody. You've had a day. I've had, yeah, it's been a gnarly 96 hours for sure. I feel like you don't ever stop, though. No, this was my first four-day music video shoot, which you were in. Yeah. Which was cool. And thank you for having us. Let's talk about it. What was the video shoot about? Well, it was...

visually inspired by beyond the pines. I think story wise as well. Um, the first 20 minutes anyway. Yeah. If you guys are going to watch, if you're going to watch beyond the pine, don't watch any more than 30 after Ryan Gosling has his moment. Don't watch it. It is. It's quite a thrill kill. Yeah. It's like a thrill. And then it happens and you're like, Oh,

Wait a minute. He's on every poster. This movie has to be about him. Yeah, that was kind of a trip. But aesthetically, I love riding motorcycles. I think telling the story of a lower middle class struggling family and relationship is really what I grew up seeing. So it was something that felt right to do on a song that everyone keeps telling me is a hit. So I think the glamorous...

was obvious and I kind of went the other way and kept it G, like how me and Jelly's background is. You guys went back to your roots. I think, absolutely. I think like, you know, we repped for, you know, when you get it, when you are exploring yourself in front of all these cameras and in the industry, sorry guys. These are some beautiful cats, by the way. Thank you.

Yeah, these are some awesome cats that just walked in. They're like, dad's home. But when you're exploring yourself in front of the cameras and, you know, you're seeing success and, you know, you obviously idolize people and lifestyles and things. You kind of, you know, you're doing your own outfit changes metaphorically towards success.

What you think would look cool with this era, what would look cool with that era. And this era for me, after all the glitz and glam of the last run that I've had, is just back to my roots, man. I went all the way to the top and I am just like...

all right i've seen it i'm so excited i'm out i'm so excited to deep dive all of this with you um so circling back to the video though so the song is for lonely roads which my husband is going to be featuring on and that's

out right now. - Yes. - 'Cause by the time this drops, it's gonna be out, so you guys need to go listen to it. - Yeah. - And when do you think the music video is gonna drop? Is it gonna drop before? - I think the music video will be out by the time this is out. - Yay, so you guys gotta go watch it. - Yeah, yeah. - 'Cause it's gonna be awesome. - I feel really, I don't really know what to do with my hands. Is it cool if I roll a cigarette? - Do you wanna sit back? Yeah, of course. All right, sit back. This is your house, so I'm telling you what to do on your couch.

Um, so you have talked a lot about your childhood and I could just kind of want to go back in time a little bit with you on that. Can we speak on your childhood a little bit? Yeah. If I've spoken on my childhood, you know, if you're reflecting on past interviews, I don't really know how far they go back, but some of them was a very insecure, uh, excuse me,

Insecure was speaking on just almost any interview I had done in which I covered myself with a egoic exoskeleton. But as far as my childhood, some of that I've spoke on in a way that I was still just very confused and very angry. And so I do not stand by everything that I said about the people in my life and my childhood because they deserve forgiveness and something different than the way that I may have felt.

Just you know so anyway, I've approached that actually kind of made me want to tear up because anybody that's ever Let me get a hold of myself here anybody that's ever dealt with childhood trauma has gone through a time in their life where they were just so angry that they've said so many things about the people that were in their life that until you get to a breakthrough and you come out

I don't want to say come out of the darkness because I feel like we're always sort of going to have one foot in. But when you get to a point where you can look at them with love or forgiveness is huge. And they're just big kids. As a parent, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing every single day of my life as a parent. You're just figuring it out constantly, but hopefully doing it with love. Absolutely. Yeah.

And sometimes, like in my situation with my father, he was so tormented from some of the most insane shit that I could imagine a kid could go through that he had to figure it out. But with almost every possible bad circumstance going against him too. So it's almost like the expectations are too high because we think...

that they know everything because we grew up looking up at them. We're all just lost and trying to figure it out. - I feel like you've been fighting since you came out of the womb. I'm just looking down at my notes here, but it says you were born with your umbilical cord wrapped around your neck, correct? - Yeah. - So I mean, you were already fighting the minute that you came out. When you were born, you had your mom and your dad. I don't ever really hear you talk about your mom a lot,

And a lot of the stuff that I got from your childhood, I didn't take from interviews. If you listen to your music, you tell a story. You speak a lot about your life in music. And I think that anybody that is a fan of yours or a listener of yours would know them. Yeah, I saved a lot of my interview moments for my lyrics. So I think a lot of my childhood is represented in my songs. My mom and I actually...

have reconnected in a really intense way in the past three or four years. You know, that side of my family is, they're all from Norway. They're extremely Norwegian, so very stoic. You know, so the emotional side of things I get from my father, who was very, you know, he wore everything on his sleeve, right? So like his depression was very obvious. His need for love was very, you know, like,

I wish I could have told him before he died that I was really inspired by how emotional he was. I thought that was really cool in hindsight because I am very emotional as well. Probably because everything on my chart is so Pisces. Yeah, I was saying that on July 5th, it's the same day Hotel Diablo came out.

But that's also the day he died. And it trips me out because on the album, I said, doctors said my dad won't be here a year from now. And then a year to the date he died. And then on that date this year, I was outside and I was doing a ritual for him just to try and see if I could channel any, if I could hear him at all.

But I did tell him what I just said. Sorry if I'm very long-winded. I'm pretty awkward as a human, and so I don't really know if...

what i'm saying if anyone gives a so maybe i'll just move on what was it what's the next question you don't have to apologize though it's actually beautiful what you say and it's so real and i think people need to hear what you have to say because there's a lot of people who are working through including myself where i just lost my dad last month and i i know exactly what you're going through with

you know, a father who was absent, you know, in certain things and like, you know, just we're all dealing with childhood trauma. But your dad actually, it says that your dad was tried at nine years old for his own father's death. Yeah. Can we talk about that? I think so. That's interesting that you. Yeah. Yeah, sure.

That has to contribute to how he was as a father to you because it seems like it was almost generational, like passed down. Yeah, every medium that I've spoke to or seer that I spoke to says there's a generational curse on all the men in my family that they will die alone and they've all died alone.

I'm the seventh generation, which means that I should be able to break the curse. And I was born on the 22nd, which is a master number. And the numerology behind mine is a curse breaker. So I do hope in this lifetime that I master my best self and what I'm supposed to do. It's a very difficult road that I'm on right now with that. And my father's childhood journey definitely bled into mine because we shared the same bed.

the same bed for years. And that was, you know, the body, especially if you're intuitive or born intuitive, your body receives the energy from all around you. So, you know, those years that my dad slept depressed, I took on all that. And I just remember finding that I always used to get so mad at him when I was a kid because if I scared him or he heard a loud boom or a loud noise, he would freak out.

like gnarly freak out. And I would be like, you're supposed to be like, you're supposed to be a man, dude. Like, why are you acting like this? And I would, we would, you know, it just made me hate him. And then you sit there and you think about a kid who was on trial at nine years old for the murder of his father. And knowing that the police came and found the shotgun underneath the bed. And the story that was told to me was always that, you know,

Their dad dropped the gun and his head essentially blew off. And so that all happened in the room with my dad at nine years old. And so him and my grandmother were tried for the murder. They were both acquitted. I had a very interesting talk with him on his deathbed about that moment, which I think I'll leave that between me and my father. You know, that led to a lot of like, you know, he had split personality and, and, and,

schizophrenia runs really heavy in that side of the family. So a lot of things, man, I've taken on and I think I've projected myself to be somebody who has the stamina to endure all of these things that come with fame and criticism and hate because I fought back with all those traumas by becoming what I always wanted my dad to be.

which was like tough and you know, shake everything off and just fight anyone who you know, comes at you. I never understood why he was so closed. But dude, I'm tired and I'm a really shy, fucked up kid internally and really broken and I'm just now fixing myself and I don't have the energy to be the image that I was.

Because I'm also kind of sick of being on an island alone where no one is outside of my fans. You know, my fans who really can read the music and read into the music. Sorry. But as far as like public persona, I'm really, really sick of being what they think I am. So I don't really know how I got onto that from my dad's story. But I don't know how you found that either. That's a very like, it was a very quite the piece of information to stumble upon.

I just did a little bit of research and I just, you know, I try to figure out what makes people tick and who they are. And, you know, when I first met you, I even told Jay, I was like, this is a sweet boy that just has a wallop. Something hurt him. And I just wanted to kind of, you know, and I'm sorry if I interfered or anything like that with your process that's going on. But I just kind of wanted to figure out, like, you know, where is this hurt coming from? And, you know, I just...

i um like to just go deep and figure out you know yeah well it's the truth and i don't run from the truth you know my father was on trial for a murder at nine years old like i that i watched every day and you know my mom who's who's such a sweet woman who i was was molded to be so mad at molded by your dad yes okay when did she leave at nine okay

So both my dad and I had interesting nine or nine or 10 years. I think it was nine or 10 and it wasn't, and it wasn't leave also. I like, I, I, I mean she left, but also my father was hard to deal with. Dude was gnarly, you know, like super gnarly. When was your dad's birthday? What sign was he? December 30th. Capricorn. And, uh,

So, you know, he would like with the only word I didn't hear the word mom during my whole teenage years. All I heard was whore. And my mom is like the sweetest woman ever. And she's a scientist and she's so smart and she's and, you know, she's beautiful. And she, you know, I really I really missed her. And I really regret missing all those years because of who I was, you know.

Those years are really important. People shape you no matter how much you try to be your own. Absolutely. So she helped me to realize that all those things that happened, especially just like that, you can isolate just that. I mean, there was a lot of shit with my family. My dad lost his brother. My dad has a twin. They were triplets. The triplet died at birth. Yeah.

And if you just isolate that trial, my dad after that, like I said, every loud noise he would react. But he became, have you ever seen American Psycho? I haven't seen it. Well, Christian Bale's character. Oh, yes. I'm so sorry. Everything that he does is black or white. There's no gray area. Every piece of clothing is folded perfectly. It's ironed.

- I feel like he had a little bit of autism. - He would shave every morning. His isms were so definitive and that's how my father was. Every piece of clothing was like this. He was obsessed with suspenders. And so, you know, it was the same thing. There was so many things that I did wrong that my dad would always put in check. But I remember every time I held my pen like this,

Boom. That's lazy. You hold your pen like this. And it's just everything was that. Like, I remember the first time I got arrested, when we got out, he sat us down and it was the Bible. You know, like...

It's just, yeah, like everything was very, there was no, oh yeah, you can do it your way. Like what's, what's your things that you want to do? Right. It sounded like he might've had a little bit of like severe OCD also. There's a song that you say, my heart was broke like my ribs as a kid when me and my father fought. Is that a true story? Like did your dad break your ribs? Yeah. Well, and, and, and vice versa. Yeah.

It was more so his ribs than my ribs. Both of us got fucked up. I remember that specific fight was in our kitchen in Cleveland. And we were uber twinning because both of us had just big ass black and purple right here. So you guys were just in your living room, just... Kitchen. Going to kitchen, going at it. Yeah, that was pretty common though. And I was a really... I acted out a lot. Like once I got to the point where...

I could fight back, I was just on it, you know. - Angry. - But, yeah, and I was angry. And also my dream was so, it was so potent. Like nothing could stop my dream. I was going to be a rapper, I was going to be a performer. Like there was no-- - You manifested. - Curfew for me and any punishment I had to take, I would take it. Yeah, I mean, I'll never forget when me, Slim and Dove, we came to my house one day.

and uh all of the furniture was gone and my dad was just sitting on the floor and he was like going to africa my dad just did and i saw and i didn't see him till i was till i was 26 and i had already you know kind of achieved the dream and uh i just remember how old were you uh i think i was he had he had met my daughter once before he left so i was probably 19 because she was

you know, I was having the baby when I was 18 and I was like, dad, I'm having a kid. And that was another thing where he was like, there's no fucking way. There's absolutely no way you're having a kid. And he was, you know, disappointed because I was working at fast food and he was like, you know, why the fuck didn't you become a collegiate scholar? Um,

Your mom. So just circling back to that real quick, just to clarify. So when she left, my cat is shitting over there. So nice. You guys catch the downwind, any downwind that is a little air biscuits. We're good. And that's my, that's my trouble child. I think you got it.

Yeah. That one's tickets. So circling back to mom, just to clarify, when she left home, you chose not to be a part of her life or did she just go no contact with you? Well, you know, another thing that kind of came with her and I reconnecting was just realizing that my dad was keeping me from her for years to hurt her. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh,

Yeah, I mean, I you know, I had all those frustrations like why the fuck would you never call? Why would you never show up? I was in all these things came out like I was literally in your front yard and got the cops called on me I you know every time I called he would answer the phone and you know go off and so I that was that was a manipulative Parent move where again, it's it's really funny. I was at a blink-182 show the other night and I

they're about to do Stay Together for the kids, which is like, it's probably my favorite Blink song. And it's a song about a broken home. And he was like, if anybody comes from a broken home, you know, raise your cell phone lights. So all these cell phone lights go up. He's like, I just want you to know that it's all your fault. It's really funny because I was a prime example of that where it was like, I was kind of the tool of

manipulation between the whole thing where but it's never your fault I understand but I have to laugh at it at this point and honestly it really it I kind of was okay kind of there there's a quote I heard today that I actually absolutely fell in love with and it said sometimes you're older than your elders on an energy level your parents might be younger than you spiritually

well that is me and my daughter because my daughter is a wise oak tree i have that in my notes and we're gonna so we're gonna talk about her too we can move on to that um let's talk about well i would like to say for the record i i love my mom dearly and i and i misrepresented her a lot early in my career and not misrepresented in the sense of not speaking truth i was speaking my truth but i didn't give the masses a chance to understand her truth and i didn't

I wasn't in contact with her to understand her truth. And there was plenty of things that I was mad at her about because it was like, your fight has to be stronger. Like you gotta, you gotta get to me. Yeah. You, if you, you know, you gotta Liam Neeson this shit. Yeah, no, I get it. Come fucking find me no matter what it takes. And, you know, because I was stuck in that situation, you know, my, my,

The house I was even living in with my aunt and her husband, who was a giant piece of shit. I shouldn't have been in that place. Can we touch on your aunt, too? She was somebody who was very dear to you. That was my dog for life. Was it mother's or father's side? That was my dad's older sister. Take me on that journey with you guys' relationship. Yeah.

She was like the biggest supporter of any dream I had. I wanted to be a Jedi so bad. And, you know, she bought me this hockey stick so that I could take the end of the little hitting part off so I could have like a

like a lightsaber. And I would just always be in the yard and just be like, you know, I would attach a carabiner to a rope to a tree and I would put a bandana over my eyes like when they train and the lasers come with them and they can just feel. So I would always like hit the carabiner in the front yard and she would, any dream I had, she would be like, hell yeah, you're going to be a Jedi. Like what can I do to support it? And when I wanted to be a battle rapper, you know, I would always make her watch videos with me on BET and MTV and

She was like, well, we gotta get you looking like that. So she took me and she got me my first hip hop outfit. Which in hindsight, I looked so fucking stupid. Oh no, what was it? Now you gotta tell me what it was. It was probably just some like Anichi denim shorts that were just like down to like my shins with these stitches in them. So it was different colored denim on it, matching denim, whatever. But it's crazy because when I wore that to school,

everyone all of a sudden it was like right when at the end of the year when all the yearbooks you sign everyone's yearbook and the first my on my sixth grade yearbook it's so cool because no one signed it because i had no friends except for my one my one boy who's locked up who's still my friend but uh seventh grade man when i pulled up in that denim thing everyone wanted to sign my yearbook and i was battle rapping too so everyone was like hell yeah you know like they were they were with my heart they could see i was

they could see i was vicious and i had good rhymes as a child that's all you need is one person in your corner just telling you you can be whatever the you want to be totally and then i mean she carried that mentality so heavy into my career because she worked at target and um dude we would there was a strip club across street called shotgun willies and it was in the parking lot of this target and um one of my proudest moments was pulling the tour bus up to target

to pick her up. But she had these glasses on and I was like, Barbara, take your glasses off. Connect with me or whatever. She wouldn't take them off. I was like, what's wrong? She finally took her glasses off. She had a black eye. My uncle had fucked her up. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't just go kill that motherfucker right there. That was obviously...

in the plans, but everybody was like, dude, you have so much going for you. You know, like, don't, don't make this decision. But that was my heart. You know, like I, I couldn't take that anyone did that to her, you know? So especially him. But anyway, cut to a couple of years later, you know, we're at the, we're at this at Shotgun Willie's and all the dancers are coming up to me and they're like, yo, like, we love your aunt.

you know, is, is, does she work at Target? And I was like, yeah, she was like, yeah. They were like, yeah. Anytime we go over there to buy anything, she always has like MGK CDs next to her register. And if you look young or you buy anything that resembles, like you might listen to me, she'd be like, have you guys heard of MGK? That's my nephew. You should buy the CD. Or like if I was on the cover of a magazine, like inked magazine or something like that, she'd be like,

you know if someone's buying like a i don't know a cool t-shirt or another cd or something she'd be like dude you should you should buy my nephew's uh magazine cover and so she was obsessed with with me and i was like a really really inspiring person in my life and you know watching her go through cancer and then beating that and um she was always really resilient

But she and my father, they both died from liver cirrhosis. They drank themselves to death. That was a hard one to bite, especially because the last phone call that I had, I cut her off. I was in a really bad mood. I was in Germany about to do this festival called Splash Festival. And she would always call me, and it was one of those conversations where I was like... Honestly, she was probably just giving me love, and I'm really uncomfortable with love. Right.

And if I'm at that point in my life, if I was getting any of it, I got really like, oh, just, you know. And I just hung up the phone, and that was the last time I spoke to her. And she called me and told me she had passed right before I went on stage. She knows you love her, though. She can hear you talking about her at any time. Yeah, that's one where, man, I always just wish she would come to me in my dreams or something. Like, I never got closure with that. And I did ask that the spirits don't take her to the next place.

life yet like I I really want her to be a spirit guide for me in this lifetime like I want her to stay watching over me and I feel like it's I feel like it's happened you know like I've had a really big turnaround in the past couple years spiritually and uh

even just with career, you know? - Yeah, absolutely. And I guarantee that's her hand in that for sure. - Yeah. Am I like, look, what am I supposed to do with my eyes? - You're doing great. Don't overthink it, you're crushing it.

Um, so you started battle rapping in seventh grade, seventh grade, maybe sixth grade, seventh grade though. Was that your outlet? Because you were such an introverted child and just such a, you know, had such a crazy home life and abusive home life. Was that your outlet to just go and be like, you know, cause I, whenever I envisioned battle rappers, I envisioned like the aggression and just, you know, snipering people verbally. Yeah. I, I,

desperately needed something to fit in. You know, I was an okay skater. I was an okay fighter. Fighting was really big growing up, you know, like all these kind of different outlets of kind of like alpha actions were the highlight of what seemed like people were accepting, you know, like a lot of my friends weren't in gangs. So I wanted to, you know, be a gang member a lot of, but what I was obsessed with was music, you know, like I loved music.

I just, I loved music. That was who was always talking to me was my headphones. And so I, uh, who were your influences back then? DMX was huge for me. Tupac was huge for me. The Kanye and 50 albums and Lincoln Park and Limp Bizkit. And that, that, that era of albums was, was so it had all the angst I needed. It was saying all the stories of a runaway fuck up broken home youth. And, um,

um yeah my first battle rap I'll never forget I don't remember any of the lines that I said but I do remember I looked up it was a dude that was taller than me and the last line I was like bitch get your tall ass down and kiss my feet and it rhymed with whatever I'd said before and everyone was just like and lost their mind yeah and it was so opposite of how I was at home because at home I was essentially bullied to just be like a

piece of furniture in the corner. You know what I mean? Like I didn't really have a voice at all. So I had to find a way to have a voice and battle rap gave me my. Your alter ego. For sure. Yeah. For sure. And I probably got lost in that because I just started to just, that was the person who was accepted. So I just became that person. Summer is here, baby. Plenty of time to enjoy everything you love about summer, but it kind of depends on what you do right now.

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I 100% resonate with that because I was abused by my stepmother growing up. And so she was the bully at home and I became the bully outside of the house. It's because you just feel like you have to put on this facade so that nobody can hurt you. Because you already get hurt so much inside your house that when you leave the house, nobody's going to fucking hurt you because you control that. Totally.

So battle rapping became your love. And then, you know, later on down the line, you ended up having a baby when you were about 18, correct? Yep. Can we talk about Casey? Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to. Let's talk about her. You light up whenever you talk about her. Yeah. And I love that. And I noticed in a lot of her interviews, you know, she does seem like such an old soul. I'm telling you.

Even hearing you on the phone with her last night, it was like you were reporting to your mom. Like even your demeanor and everything kind of changed. Yeah. Well, my life changed. I'll never forget the first breath she took. She came out and she wasn't breathing. And then the doctor, I think, like tapped her chest or something like that. And she did the like... And I just remember everything was jokes and me trying to make her mother feel...

I was trying to make her mother laugh while she was having, which was just going so poorly. Like it was so bad. It was, I didn't know what to do. I should have been calming, but I was just trying to make jokes. She was like, she's like, I'm shitting a kid out here. And, uh, man, when she took that first breath, dude, every tears like Niagara fall started coming and I fell in love. And that was really the first person I ever, you know, loved.

Like they actually gave you that feeling of love besides your aunt. You said that you were number 22, which I'm, I was born on the 22nd myself. Were you really? January 22nd. Wow. Cool. And we are, we are rule breakers and generational curse breakers. Right. And I feel like it stops with you with,

lineage that your family has with the men. Yeah. And I see what a father you are to Casey and, you know, can you appreciate that you've actually broken that curse with your family? Uh, I don't know. I got to finish this life first and do a review of my soul. Hmm.

kind of see if I made the right decisions or not. And I feel like one of my favorite quotes, which my friend, my son gave me was, I thank God that I have the ability to punish myself today so that I can forgive myself tomorrow. So, you know, for the mistakes that I've made, I'm grateful that I also have the choice to forgive myself. Absolutely. After, because I think a lot of us live with like,

oh man, I messed up. Like I'm just stuck being that mistake. And it's really hard with the internet too, just constantly wants to make you be that mistake also. And I just want everyone to feel comfortable to know that, you know, God or the universe or energy period has given you the ability to forgive yourself. Like that's a choice that you have to make. And

Just like you have the choice to get in your car and drive somewhere, get out of bed and do something like you have, you have that ability to forgive yourself, which is really important. Otherwise, those things are just going to grow inside of you and eat you alive. And that's, I think a lot of, I honestly, I truly believe that, you know, things like cancer or disease in some cases come from trauma.

And secrets that you've withheld that you can't forgive yourself for. Secrets keep you sick. Yes. Absolutely. So it's really important to... Get it out. Yes. And accept and forgive. Do you think you'll ever be able to give yourself your flowers while you are alive, though, for being the father that you are? Like, you may not feel like you're perfect, and I don't think anybody's a perfect parent, but coming from what you grew up in to who you are now and the father that you are to Casey...

would you, can you ever just look at yourself and be like, yeah, I did do that? Yeah. But I, I could always, you know, I could be a better father. So I just, I don't know. I mean, I hope, I hope that I'll always be someone that she can depend on and lean on and love. I guess I'm just so scared because I know how my relationship with my parents was and

You know, I was so mad at my dad up until the last moments of his life. So I just, I almost, uh, I don't know. And I'm, I'm like, I'm so in love with her that I'm scared. You know, you don't ever want to like disappoint. And so I, yeah, I mean, it's not for me to give myself any flowers. I guess I, I, uh, that's for her to decide if she, you know, if, if I did a good job or not. I understand that. Yeah.

So take me on this journey where you're battle rapping, you just had a baby, and I think you were at South by Southwest in Austin. I mean, the story that was kind of built was that, but essentially we did, I think, a South by Southwest prior to that, maybe even another one before that. I think everyone had kind of discovered me at the same time, label-wise, because there was a big bidding war, and...

Yeah, I mean essentially we had to you know choose a label to go with and but it wasn't South by Southwest it was really the mixtape circuit like we were The the one thing that I always loved that we did was we would catch Everyone coming out of school and we would hand them our mixtape and so all the seniors who would graduate you know go off to college and all these different parts of the country and

And they take a piece of home with them with our, with our mixtape. And they're like, yeah, but back home, we got this kid, like you got to check him out. And so like the word really started to spread. And that was when mixtape era was, you know, it was really important. And blog era was really important. And the me and Mac and whiz and big Sean's and Kendrick's and ASAPs, all these, you know, all these mixtape kids were just kind of just,

ground zero handing out CDs so I I still meet people who are like yo I remember you gave me this in whatever year and you know Slim was a huge part of that I mean I remember I saved up so much just to buy my own like CD burner and we would print all the CDs put the labels on we shared a one bedroom apartment together and uh

We would just go out and hand them out. And there was this one really funny memory where we went and gathered up all these coins. Like we saved like, I don't know, 300, $400 worth of coins. Oh, I remember that. The, the vending machine that you would take it to. Or you do like the big water bottle. Yeah. And then we bought a Juno keyboard with that. Kids now will never know. They'll never know. They'll never know. It's all right. But you got a keyboard. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. So we got a Juno and we made all our beats with that. And, uh,

- Yeah, I don't know. I also was just like, dude, I would just rap for every single person that would listen. That was kind of, I worked at an airbrush shop and that was kind of what I was like Cleveland famous for was just like, oh, that's the white boy from the airbrush shop who always raps for everybody. Or I would go in front of the mall. Cause the mall is the big skyscraper in downtown Cleveland. It's called Tower City. I would go in front of there. That's like the meeting point between East Side and West Side on,

where the trains come and i would just rap for everybody out front or battle rap whoever the you know the illuminati talks and all that stuff that that come towards me from people i just it's it i explain it best

In the end of that El Pistolero song, when I say, I don't worship the devil, that's just what they say when you get on this level. Literally. Just like... They accused Jay and I of being... I'm like, look, homie, like, this is what hard work is. Hard work means that, you know, something comes from it. And if you look at my journey, I've been pushing and pushing and pushing. And, you know, by all means, I would have loved a...

So I would have loved a button pusher to be like, we're going to make him huge. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like they would have saved me a lot of stress and a lot of friends lost and a lot of, you know, a lot of years, you know, it's odd to be on at 19 and not experience your biggest success until you're 30. Yeah.

And that was one thing that Jelly, I love that speech when he was like, don't ever, when he won Best New Artist. Yeah. It took me 38 years to get here. Yeah, for sure. And don't ever let age be a factor. 2 Chainz didn't hit it off until he was like 40, right? Dude, he was like 36 or something like that when it happened. And I hate that the expression grow up. Right. Like I posted...

you know, the fangs or something like that the other day and you see one comment out of the 5,000 that you just zoom in on and it's like something about like grow up or, you know, you're too old to be doing this or whatever it is, which is so ironic because we're all still so young. But to me, that's just,

a sign of you being scared to ever unleash your creativity. I couldn't imagine if Tim Burton had to come up with Nightmare Before Christmas before he hit 20 years old. Yeah, absolutely. Because we wouldn't have these things. Like there is no age on art. There is no age on fun. I love, I was just reading this book earlier. Let me see if,

Yeah. Join with all those who experiment, take risks, fall, get hurt, and then take more risks. Stay away from those who affirm truths, who criticize those who do not think like them. People who have never once taken a step unless they were sure they were that they would be respected for doing so and who prefer certainties to doubts. I love that. I don't ever want to step and know that the ground is going to hold me. Yeah. The best part of life are these risks that I take.

and the worst thing i could ever imagine being is someone who is caged in because others live in a cage one of my favorite quotes is from oscar wilde and it's you will always be fond of me for i represent to you the sins you never had the courage to commit i'm telling you what is growing up literally so it's so odd

you gotta always just be in tune with your inner child and i think a thousand percent the the second that your light is fueled by gasoline instead of natural wood means that it's forced like this is all things that burn inside of me naturally why would you want to you know why would you want a synthetic result instead of something that is organic

I think it's the world is so programmed and people just take everything so literal now. And it's just like there's a time limit on everything. And really people don't realize that time is like the most precious commodity and something that you'll never get back. And it's like, why don't you want to do what you love with that time instead of what the world's telling you to do? Also, why if someone had their childhood robbed, would you not want to allow them that back? That's like expecting. That gave me goosebumps.

if Helen Keller got her hearing and her eyesight back at 36 being like whoa whoa whoa why are you on a why are you on a why are you on a seesaw right that's for kids like well I never got to experience this like I want to experience all the joys of life so to me let me experience all these joys I didn't have 20 in my 20s I was on drugs I don't remember

any happy moments. I don't remember any of the, you know, attaining the shows that, you know, finally sold out. I don't remember those things, so let me enjoy. I didn't get to, I was so tight and determined to, you know, overcompensate for the traumas that I had to show that I was good enough that I didn't get the chance to creatively express myself maybe with things like

that make me happy. I was trying to, you know, satisfy others. Mask also mask all the pain that you went through. When did your drug abuse start or drug experimentation? Um,

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Probably, I mean, 11 was the first time that I did ecstasy with my one friend who lived on the same street because his older sister dated a rave DJ. Oh my goodness, 11 years old? Yeah, but it was funny. They told us how to do it. They gave us little pacifiers because your teeth grind. That's not, you're 11. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then it's not like it continued daily. It took days.

breaks and i was more focused on music than i than i was being a burnout but then in my 20s i went the fuck off for sure made up for lost time definitely what was your drug of choice started started with weed and alcohol then i really loved snorting by vans because the the work ethic that came with either just being able to like lock in on something and being like

Oh my God, I just wrote six songs in two hours. Are you diagnosed ADD? Oh, for Vyvanse and stuff like that? Hell no. I don't know what I am. Just because they work so good on you. Because I know when I take Adderall, it makes me feel like I am cracked out and I have the opposite effect than getting anything done. Yeah. I also think maybe when I was... Yeah, I don't know. Who knows? Yeah. Loved like hydrocodone. Oh yeah, I love a good L'Orderve.

Loved Percocet. That was my dad loved Percocet too. Percocet and red wine. Like my dad's twin told me that. Was your dad an addict also? Yeah, I didn't. That was actually how he really connected to my music was he went to rehab when he came back from Africa and he met someone with an MGK tattoo. And that guy, whoever that was, shout out to you, my boy, because you really opened up a big...

door for me and my dad's relationship because I guess the kid was like dude you don't know what your kid like means to people you don't know what it's like this this music does for for us and so my dad really kind of had a different respect for me um after that rehab stint and like like I said you know he the last that what's up boy the the last thing that we did which you know he was too far gone anyway so I wasn't even like I was trying to be the

you know, rule enforcer, but he was like, dude, can you just sneak me in some whiskey? Cause he was in hospice and obviously you can't drink or do anything. And at this point, you know, his, his, his feet had already been amputated. Oh my goodness. That was, you know, one of the hardest things in my life was like putting it on his socks over, um, his, whatever was left of his, you know, feet or whatever. And exactly, exactly. Um, and, um,

Yeah, I went and got the best bottle of bourbon I could find, and we drank, and then he peaced out. Do you feel like that helped kind of put you into more of a pop culture moment, quote unquote, and, you know, Hotel Diablo was kind of under the spotlight? Oh, I actually feel like Hotel Diablo was severely underappreciated. Really? For sure. I think until, like...

Until later, you know, it got appreciated as, you know, probably my best body of work as a rap album. It got 1.3 billion streams, but you felt like the media kind of wrote you off, right? I'm for the people, you know, I'm a man of the people. So I really only care what the people think. The whole like yearning for critic approval left me many years ago. That's why I mean, if you think that I for one second thought that me making a pop punk album was going to

satisfy anybody other than what I wanted to do. It has to be, you know, like I clearly knew that it was going to rupture the structured system of like you're supposed to do this and you're, you know, labeled as this so this is what you are. I'm wearing the shirt of a boundary breaker. I look up to those who break the system and make people think that's what art is supposed to do so I

I also struggle with the like, did that bring spotlight? Because I had been facially and musically famous for eight years before that. There wasn't a street that I could walk on from here to Australia, to Germany, to anywhere where people weren't like, oh shit, that's Machine Gun Kelly. So I just think the internet narrative really tries to force something that, you know, in time, as long as I continue to run my own race,

people will look back on and it won't even be a, I think you've proven yourself. Yeah. So, um, 1.3 billion streams is nothing to go off at. I mean, that's, I think that's the people telling you that they're consuming you for sure. They're loving you. And I'm the opposite of wizard of Oz. I'm outside constantly making sure that, you know, my feet are touching ground and that I'm connecting with the people that I'm speaking for.

Absolutely. And I think that's why your fans love you and the people in your life love you because you are such a strong force to be reckoned with. For sure. So diving back into your album with Hotel Diablo, it was bittersweet. You know, we talked about the 1.3 billion streams and stuff like that, but you did also touch on the fact that your father did die the same day that that came out. And you had said in an interview somewhere that a neighbor had told you some fucked up things that you couldn't get closure on. Yeah.

Can we dive into that a little bit? It was so eerie and so really just wrong in my opinion because I was not able to, you know, speak to my father or my aunt about any of the things that were said about him. But, you know, one thing I know that he wanted, that he had asked me to do was to go into his safe, which was in storage in Cleveland. And so I did that and I was, you know, kind of where I got

some psychological closure that you know, he had a severe split personality disorder and You know I had had a just gnarly kind of rehab stints throughout my life that I never really knew about so like when he would be like I'm gonna go on a job interview and it would be like a Long time he was gone. Like I was kind of putting the pieces together like oh he was in rehab. Um, I

The reason I'm asking is because you had said that it sent you into such a spiral that you ended up putting a shotgun in your mouth. Well, that I guess I wouldn't necessarily talk about that because it's really hard for things to get taken out of context. I also think drugs are really mind altering and like people should be really careful of what it does to your brain chemistry because maybe that's not even necessarily you doing the actions, you know, that are self-harming. Yeah, absolutely. It's something else taking over your body. Um,

But, you know, what I can say is it made me so uncomfortable that I didn't even want to put my dad's ashes and my aunt's ashes in the same room as each other. So, yeah.

How do you move on from something like that? How do you like, cause you're, you're literally, you're riding one wave where you don't feel, you had said that you don't feel like Hotel Diablo got, you know, what it deserved. But on the other hand, you, you know, the streams don't lie. And then you're dealing with the situation with your dad and drug use and mental health. Like where, where does a shining light come in? And like, where do, where do you, how do you navigate through such a dark time like that of highs and lows? Yeah.

My specific situation was really fortunate because of the group of friends that I have and they've been the same group of friends that I've had since I came in. So I learned the power of expressing and being vulnerable and like getting, speaking things to them and receiving really grounded messages.

advice and comfort and loyalty from people that I know would never turn their backs on me no matter what and I've tested that to the max you know where if they were going to leave then they would have left a long time ago yeah um I do anyone that gets close to me I push them away to see if they stay for sure it's all a test it's not because I want them to go anywhere absolutely I'm never I was watching this video my mom sent me of me as a kid where

I had a really funny lisp when I was a kid. I had to get my pharyngeal cut 'cause my tongue wouldn't go past my teeth. So I talked like this and like, it was really funny. And like, I couldn't say my R's very well. So I was walking around and I was like, my mom was filming me and I was like, "I'm hunting bales." And she was like, "Okay, well like, where are you gonna go?" And I was like, "I'm gonna go over there and I'm gonna hunt bales." And I started walking.

And I'm just like waiting for her to like come with me. And I'm just like, come with me. And like that, that really like is a testament. Well, it's like a microcosm of who I really am, where I, I really don't want to be alone. Like I don't ever want, I don't ever want to be alone. You know, like I love my friends so much and I love really hard, but I'm not good at

showing it i show it by being an asshole or you know trying to show like oh see i knew you would leave me and kind of like a form of self-sabotage oh dude self-sabotage king right yeah and uh it also got you know it's funny covid helped me stop cocaine like cocaine was you asked me what my favorite drug what drug of choice was cocaine was

the shit to me. Right. It gave me like me and Jelly talk about that all the time where I'm so socially awkward, but I would do that before I went somewhere and I would leave and just be like, I just fucking killed that shit in there. Like everyone loves me, dude. Like I was talking to everybody and you know, just like this false sense of, you know, Superman syndrome or just like,

you know, I, whatever. And so I, you know, it's funny cause COVID really helped that. Cause obviously everyone thought it was a fucking zombie apocalypse. So none of the dealers would leave their house. Yeah. Exactly. So you had no choice, but to just like, yeah. All right. Like, you know, I got to find something else. Um, when did Megan enter the picture? I was just, that was, that was right there where I was leading into how powerful the heart is because I,

You can play with every other sense that you have in your body, but if your heart isn't there, it's like this example of being an archer and you can be so technically skilled and all of these, your precision could be perfect, right? And all that stuff. But if you switch to an uncomfortable place, like a shaky bridge,

If you're not shooting from your soul, then all that precision, all the technicalities that you've mastered, like nothing beats a shot from the soul. Right? Like that anybody, that's why I never care when people give me shit about guitar playing. I don't care how technically good you are. Like every time I play my guitar, I'm playing it from my heart. So whatever I'm playing is how I felt that day. And you know, the people who are like, why do I, why am I not?

you know on on his level of fame or other things like that i all i've done is just shoot shots for my soul so if there's nothing to deny that as people that will always resonate and you know my arrows will hit their heart and that woman struck a bullseye and when i felt that sense light up everything else went away and i learned what it was to accept living that was like

it gave purpose to everything I was confused at why I was here for. And so I was, you know, I'm forever grateful to God and indebted to the destiny lines that wove me into, that wove me and her together because that was something where, you know, when I saw her eyes for the first time, it was like I had

telescope to every secret in the universe and I think what followed that really proved what moving with love does because you know my the album that I made after that which is take us to my downfall went to a level I had never experienced and you know I started to be able to feel

my body in different ways, my mind, like the frequency of my mind and the information that started coming into it and the way that I was able to start processing my own, you know, she was a, when, you know, when you have a twin flame relationship, it's, you're essentially looking at a mirror at all of the things that you fucking have ran away from your whole life. And, you know, it's, it's not like this grand waltz of, you know,

love and gentility. It's really, really, really dark at first. And it's toxic because you're staring. You're essentially... Do you watch Harry Potter? I don't, but they do. Remember that mirror where he could look in and he could see his parents and all that? It's like looking at that, but instead you're seeing all of the things that you've ran away from this whole time and all the things that those drugs have numbed and the music and successes have numbed.

and you're forced to either look away and lose or face and embrace. And that is the endless waltz that we are constantly in with each other. And so I think the reason that she and I have stepped away from publicizing anything in our relationship, just down to photos of us having fun together or things like that is because we're both really intuitive people.

And so we feel the millions of, we feel the millions of hate that comes at you. The universe wants to tear down beautiful things always. But you guys standing together will never allow that because you guys are way stronger than any hate that you guys could ever receive. Well, I mean, I won't lie and say that, you know, the evil eye didn't really, really take a toll on what, you know, we thought was a

beautiful thing that we could maybe inspire people to not mimic but just inspire people to love right like that not not love us but just inspire the action of love because I would be wrong in saying that we don't all you know kind of look at what we see on TV or on our phones and you know want to mimic or we think that you know I grew up like I said the

the main word that was in my house from my father about my mom was whore. And the things that I would see on TV from the movies and the music I was listening to was not about monogamy and was not about love. It was about the complete opposite. And so me and her being... You also have a huge mother wound, too. For sure. And she clearly, you know, Megan was a big...

test for me in that because you're confronting all of your mother wounds when you find the person that you love and that uh relationship or that that idea that we had where we were like you know let's let's change what's in mainstream media about relationships like let's let's show love you know kind of felt like it backfired because it's it's cute at first and then people get sick of

seeing you happy and I you know I'm actually fortunate because I feel like a lot of the exes that I have and um you know the women that I've met in my life and they they've all kind of had a an empathy for seeing that oh man it's just a broken kid man like you know he'll figure it out one day I've been supported in that for a long time and I really appreciate all those people um

that I've met on my journey for being so kind to me and understanding that I was just, you know, figuring myself out. But, um, the hate that came with the relationship was, you know, but don't let them win. No, I know. But it's just, but now we just don't let it be anybody's business. Right. They don't, they don't know if they're winning or losing. Right. For sure. All they need to know is that you guys love each other and you guys are, you know, in it to win it. Um, go ahead.

Well, yeah. I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm done. No, I love hearing you talk. It's like poetry. So I guess I just feel like I'm a really boring talker right now. It's actually really beautiful. I, I get, I talk at like a two mile per hour pace and I don't necessarily, no, I think I'm better at writing the music and talking than I am actually conversational talk. No, I think people at home are actually probably going to fall in love with you because just hearing you talk is so beautiful and it's very poetic and,

I just have one question though. Like, can we just focus on the fact that Megan had way more swagger than you when you guys met? Because you met her at a party and she said, you smell like weed. And you looked at her and you said, I am weed. And then you guys saw each other, what, like a year later? And you walked into her trailer and, you know, she's- No, I sat outside my trailer. Yeah. Praying to God that she would look over when she got out of her car to walk into her trailer and maybe have like an

a tiny inkling to be like, come over here. And it worked. Yeah. You manifested that. Except, yeah, the first time, that was the second day of work. The first day of work, I was so awkward and just stared at the ground the whole time and she just asked me questions and

she has really pretty feet. So that was like, she, and she, she had, I was like, I was looking at the ground. Like I was like, I don't know. I was just, I was super awkward and didn't know anything. I didn't know what to say. She just asked me a bunch of questions and asked me when my birthday was and things like that. Um, didn't you walk in and she said, um, how are you? And you said, I'm broken. And she said, well, let's find you or I'm lost. And she said, let's find you. I'm like, go fucking Megan. Go like that was, that's hot that she did that. Yeah. Agreed. Uh,

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That's greenlight.com slash Wondery. So what was it like making, you know, on the set of this movie, what was it like doing your first scene with her? Did you just know from the get go that you guys were going to be together? Oh, I was obsessed for sure. I was obsessed. And, uh, yeah, I think her conversation is just so entertaining. She's so fun to listen to. She has so much to say and she's so intelligent and she's, you know, she's really deep and she's dead sober. And, uh,

All the things you didn't think were possible in a woman? Yeah, I grew up with a very skewed, you know, outlook. And like I said, like my idols were kind of like my parents. So I was operating in a frequency that wasn't mine. So a lot of those years and, you know, things that I'm judged for, I'm just like, it's, you know, that's a young man operating in a frequency that is not aligned with who I really am. And so...

It also kind of strips me out because our skin cells regenerate every seven years. So I'm literally not the same person that I was seven years ago, let alone the same person that I was yesterday. Every day I'm constantly evolving and growing. But it's something really important to keep in mind, dude, because people, if they're down in the pig pen getting dirty,

They want you to be down there with them. Oh, absolutely. They don't look at the ones outside of it being stoked. They're like, fuck that. I'm trapped down here. I'm going to do anything I can to get you down here with me. Instead of being like, I'll do anything I can to get out of here and be there with you. They love you when you're on their level. If you get any higher than that, they tear you down. It's like they build you up to tear you down. Yeah. It's a very, very...

toxic cycle to participate in. And a lot of us are in it. I was in it for so long. Um, so got to get out of it. That requires strength and discipline and change, you know, going back to our quote about not, you know, not, not aligning with those who are scared to take the next step unless they're completely positive that the ground will not break beneath them. Yeah. Moving on from Megan, let's talk about tickets to my downfall.

That was pretty life changing for you. Yeah. And I don't think, look at you smile. I love whenever you own your accomplishments. I think that's a good thing for you. I'm just smiling. I don't, I'm not like saying it was like, stop it. You could be like, yeah, motherfuckers. I did that. Like you did so good. I mean, to do a genre switch, I, I've only seen a few people do it successfully. And that's you, my husband, and maybe a few other people. And it is not,

not easy because one you have to win over brand new fans and then your old fans get mad you know like you know because you've been there yeah what was it like dropping that album were you absolutely petrified or did you know that it was going to be what it was oh dude I already felt completely alienated I've been an outlier since birth so I kind of just got back into that mentality of

being a kid who wanted to be a Jedi. You know, or I did, I mean, when I was trying to be Super Saiyan, I cannot describe to you how awkward I must have looked because I would be in my front yard like, ah, like dressed. Really channeling. Fully trying to get my chi to explode off of me and kamehameha anything. So I, yeah, tickets I did purely out of the spirit of

what I wanted to do. I also did, I was a Warped Tour kid. The people that act like that was new for me, it's, I don't know if the right, it's bequeath. What does that word mean? Because I've been thinking. I bequeathed you. So like in a will, they would like bequeath you property. Okay, well I have been completely, what's the word for like lost? Like shocked. Insert synonym for shocked, but I have just been

so confused at the narrative of you know me trying something new and like I've been a band since I started I've been flabbergasted that that you have the nerve to even act like that is something new to me I've been a pop punk kid since I was just since you know like that that that like I also was I

The one thing that confused me so much was, you know, kind of when I came out with that, I was I knew I was relighting a flame for all of the peers that I had been friends with and grew up with. And knowing that I now had a platform that could shine light on something that I loved. And, you know, all of the people that, you know, I remember seeing you say that.

you know, something about motionless and white and, you know, your husband doing a song with, with the falling in reverse. And those are all guys I had, I've toured with. I've literally been on warped with those guys in 2011, 2012, 2010, like doing the Ernie ball stage, doing the main stage, playing as a band, covering blink songs and, uh, just never really had the means or the discipline to sit down and just make music.

actual record that sounded like the universe I was already a part of but I couldn't believe the lack of support from the guys that I was really kind of supporting by putting this album out and I really felt like we all missed an opportunity to make that scene pop again pop in a way that felt like there was a ceiling and I was I'm you know severely disappointed at the

the bands who didn't speak out or speak up for the movement that was happening because it had nothing to do with my music. It had to do with the fact that there's a new generation of kids who are like, holy shit, like I want to play guitar. Yeah. Because bring seeing everyone before then. And I don't mean everyone. Obviously, the scene is always alive. But I'm just saying in mainstream culture, you know, like the Migos and Chief Keef. And that was the that was the shit when all the kids were like, oh, shit, I want to wear

you know, chains and hit cadences like that on 808s. And I was also kind of seeing instrumentation die in mainstream radio and award shows and all those things. I was missing bands, you know, all of the bands that were happening were bands that have been around for generations. And I was like, no, it's time for this new shit. And, and, you know, I even loved going to the blink show recently and seeing Pierce the veil open. I was like, Oh, that's so sick. You know, like they deserve a big, they deserve this new audience. And, um,

I just felt like there was a real lack of support from people that I watched sit side stage with me when I would perform a Warped Tour and who supported me when I was down, right? Who supported me when I was on at 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. and I wasn't a force to be reckoned with in their eyes. Like it was just something cool like, oh shit, you know, we fuck with this dude. But then, you know, we didn't form an alliance like I wish we could have and I really felt like that was a missed opportunity and, you know, all the YouTubers, you know,

the reactors and people who had a platform who joined the train of this is cool to shit on for likes or scared to embrace what's uncomfortable. Not cool. I think it's way bolder to rock with something that's going to make other people look at you like, why are you down with that? Because I experienced that as a kid when I would be like, I love Blink-182 and everyone was like, no, man, that's not punk. Anti-flags punk. No effects is punk.

And you're damn right. But Blink makes great music and they're also punk as fuck. And just because they're on MTV doesn't mean that they're soft or that their music is, you know, less, has less meaning. Like, I guess, so, you know, with, with my shit, I think I'm very happy and honored to anyone who listened to our album and embraced it. And as an MGK fan, because I really think that you're the outliers. And I really think that it,

makes you in hindsight in 10 years from now it's going to make you feel proud that you are on this side of that movement as opposed to that side because my my wave doesn't crash that album did great though let me look at the streams that album did great it got like

81.1 million streams, is that correct? No, no, no, no. That's not correct? When you Google it, that's what it says. It says 81.1 million streams. Oh, on Spotify, it's, I think, 3 billion.

three billion on spotify alone yeah any way that's still a ton of streams like anybody that has anything bad to say about it is just literally promoting your album so people will listen to it at this point that's true maybe even if they're trying to take it no no i'm just saying even if they're trying to hate on you it's like those people dude because they're gonna make people curious and that's you know part of the streams that you're having yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I don't do I don't really do interviews ever. So I guess I don't really get to say my side of things. So I think I was more so not trying to point out any negative. I was just trying to fact check things because it's time for everything you said was fine. It's hard. It's hard for me to watch narratives be be be

be carried by falsified facts. Just like the thing with like, oh, he switched genres after this. It's like, no, it's impossible. There was a rap album that followed that, which was also my most successful rap album. There was, you know, a pop punk album that came, which was naturally leading up to that because even on my first album, the first track featured Avenged Sevenfold, which is a very goaded band. And Shadows. Yeah. And like those are these, like this, it's all, you know, on Hotel Diablo, I left the last track being, I think I'm okay, letting people know that the next era is,

is coming and it came but even if that's what she said and but even if you did just say say that you didn't have all that background and you didn't have that track record even if you did come in and say hey you know what i want to do rock i'm going to pick up a guitar i'm going to learn how to fucking play why is that not okay why it's so okay exactly whatever the fuck you want literally matters dude like as a society matters we have to do better you have to just do whatever makes you feel yeah

happy if you want to rap one day you want to sing country and do the fucking polka look at me watch what happens i just rapped last week and then lonely road dropped that's a country rock record yeah we're bringing mgk over to country guys

It's always a possibility. I love, I love to, I love, I listen, your country chords, your cover. You just did of Luke. I'm not Luke Ryan. Sorry, Zach of Zach. Brian's son to me was beautiful. Thank you. And you, you're the delivery, your voice, everything was amazing. Thank you. That song really spoke to me. And so I was really happy. I did that. I was, I was so flattered. I saw a tweet. Someone pulled the tweet up.

From Zach in 2012 where he was like, it's an MGK day. Aw, yeah. And I was like, sick. The universe is cool. You call Megan the son to you, don't you? Does that have any sort of... I admit, she has so many nicknames. Yeah. I love Maki. I call her Maki. She calls me Buddha. Why does she call you Buddha? And why do you call her Maki? Good question. I don't know why she calls me Buddha. Because...

not essentially very buddha-like maybe i can start now hold up there you go you need a belly though too you got to get that belly going there you go i can push out she calls you lamby too right lamby yeah lamby she said you had to earn that back though in an interview yeah why'd you have to earn it back what'd you do i think you know like lamby is like uh the the very like

softer side. Oh, I don't know. What is it? Is a lamb a sheep? Yes. Uh, yes. It's a baby sheep, correct? A lamb is a baby sheep. We all don't know. I don't know. It's all we know is that it's, it's, it's cute. It's cute and soft. Yeah. So I'm assuming that I had something to do with that unless I look like a lamb, but I think I look more like I've been, I've been labeled a meerkat.

No. You think? You have very... As far as physically. When you told me your background, it makes complete sense. Norwegian? Yes. You have all of the features. Yeah. My family is heavy, heavy Norwegian. Even the church services once a week are done in Norwegian. They're from a town where the Vikings came from.

a long time ago and such an odd path that, you know, they came to, they ended up there. But even the bowling alley in that town is called Nordic lanes. All the holiday meals are Norwegian food. Everything is. Have you ever been there? To Norway? Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, do you love it? Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like when you go back, cause I'm Brazilian and I haven't been back to Brazil yet, but they always say when you go back to like your motherland, your soul feels it. Is that true? Absolutely. And I think the, the, the magic of that culture is,

is very active in my blood. So, you know, the, when I'm able to, you know, tap into that depending on certain moon phases and, you know, I, I, I,

Kind of it's hard not to say ritual because people just take it and run. A ritual is something that you do over and over and over again. It doesn't have to be something satanic. No, not at all. That's what's so sad is that the OCD people have rituals. I have rituals. Right. All right. But the but what's so sad is that magic is so real and it's it's such a it's been erased from our entire history because it's so scary to know that we all have the power to create magic.

a product out of a dream. And, you know, even, you know, if we're just speaking about, you know, uh, moon phases, like the, the beauty of tapping into that, like, you know, when people struggle with fasting or something, like if they would just tap into what, like Ikadashi, which is an Indian, um, practice of fasting, which is 11 days after the full moon or new moon, um,

either one, the, the pull of the moon is a lot less. So the demand for your body to have food and water on that day is, is the least. Um, I love that. That's fascinating because the moon makes women have their periods. It makes the tides. Yeah. So there's so much power in that. So it's, it's there, there's the least amount of pull from the moon on that day. So you're able to

go that whole day without really feeling that urge if you work up to that point and you could just start there. It's a really, really special day if you're ever trying to get into that because it helps your body kill all the sicknesses. When you practice those things, your cells turn over and

It's a lot of magic in just that practice. There's a lot of magic in everything. And if you can just... I wish more people didn't demonize it as much as they do. And I just feel like... Not to get into religion because I don't really talk about religion that much on the podcast. But even Christianity has taken so many things from pagans. And there's just...

There's a whole world out there that if people just kind of explored it, they would see that it's not bad and it's not evil. It's not like what they portray in the movies and it's not like good, which bad, which of course there's bad people who do bad things with good things that they're given. But that doesn't mean that that's how it has to be. Yeah. But I, I guess I, I also enjoy that. It's a scary idea because it would then just become oversaturated and

True. It's, you know, I don't know. You need, you need, you need some people to be over on that side. So that I always say we are the kids from the witches that were burned word.

Your friendship with my husband, I think is the cutest thing I've ever seen because he is in desperate need of a little brother. And I don't know, maybe you need a big brother too. And he just absolutely loves you and adores you. Like this man, like he just, he's like Kels, he calls you Kels. And it's just the cutest thing ever. And he just really, I don't know. It's like, you guys are just like kindred spirits.

I agree, which is so interesting given that we started out, you know, hating each other. Yeah, let's talk about it. That was actually so long ago. I mean, you know, for the new Jelly fans, I knew him as a rapper. And for the new MGK fans, I am a rapper. And I forgot what started all of it. I mean, I know me and Yella...

I think it was him just kind of sticking up for Yela. Yeah, me and Yela didn't, you know, we didn't rock with each other. And Yela's very loyal. And it kind of got to a point though where like a lot of, you know, it was, there was a lot of street shit and gang shit behind it on both ends. And I think if I'm not mistaken, two of our big homies so dope together, like on through from the Ohio to Nashville slash Atlanta connection. And they were both like,

Y'all white boys got to chill because it's fucking a business. I don't think they realize how intertwined Ohio, Nashville, and Atlanta are. Oh, yeah. It's like this. I learned that moving to Nashville. I never knew because I'm from the West Coast. So I just thought the West Coast shit was going on. Never knew. And then when I moved out to Nashville and Jay told me about the GDs and all that stuff. The gang culture and the drug culture between all those. Those highways are really...

Wild. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. So through that, I mean, there was always respect, I'm sure, you know, because at the end of the day, we were all putting out hot shit. And, you know, the handful of fucked up, tatted white boys is...

slim to none, you know what I mean? Like, especially at that time, the ones who had, you know, made it past a mixtape buzz. So, you know. A lot of ego. Yeah, but also you kind of, you're all just waiting for each other to be like, yo, I fuck with you. Right. So once that happened, we were locked in because obviously then you respect each other's G too. So, you know, because you know that where each other comes from and all that. And I'm pretty sure Jelly and I squashed it through a really drunk,

FaceTime. Yeah. Recently though, right? It was like a year or two ago? No, it was like five, six years because then the drunk FaceTimes would continue. I remember, right? I think you had came back to Nashville to do something with Yella and we were going to be in the video but we weren't like in town or something. And I think that's when you guys had squashed it. Right. And that was a tense video shoot too because that was the first time me and Yella's people all

Like my people and yellow's people all were face to face since the beef was kind of squashed. So we were all in there like, yeah, I mean, it was a lot of,

- A lot of guns, a lot of egos. - Yeah. I think that was really-- - But everyone put it aside 'cause dude, it's crazy how music brings people together. - Totally, but I think you brought up a really good point because a lot of these beefs could be squashed by one, setting egos aside, but two, you said all we needed to hear from the other person was that you fucked with me. And it would've just been, you know? I think a lot of people, especially in the music industry, need to hear that right now because it's like, what are we beefing for?

And all we want is validation. Yeah. And if you're like me and Jelly, you don't get it from your parents, so you want it from somebody else. Yeah. And that's why I DM any artists that I see doing their thing, whether they fuck with me or not, I'm always like...

you know, I like this. - Yeah. - Or whatever, so. - I feel like that's what the OGs are supposed to do to the people that are coming up in the game. I feel like you guys, for you to do that, I think is awesome 'cause my husband does that too. And I think that just speaks volumes of your character because not a lot of people will do that. - Yeah, they didn't do it to me. They still don't do it to me. So I, you know, I'm lonely in that sense. Jelly's one of the few people who, you know, rides for me publicly, which means a lot in the,

The amount of authenticity behind how much he says, I love this dude, speaks for a hundred other people who can say it half-heartedly. And I really actually just appreciate the hours that we've spent where my temper is in a different, my temperament is in a different place than his is. And I still have this, I love this quote actually.

I'm a quote person too. I have so many of your quotes in here. So if you see me look down, I'm just looking at these pages of notes that I have for you. These cats fuck with me. This was something that Halsey had said to me about me. She said a child who grows up in a village where he wasn't held grows up to burn the world down so they can feel the heat. That gives me goosebumps. And so a lot of that is still so present in my temperament. And Jelly is great about...

Diffusing. Diffusing. And, you know, I'll have, you know, I'll have things where, you know, I bring to him like, hey, I'm mad about this at you. And he's able to hold space for it and redirect it. And it's just and at the same time make me feel validated for the emotions and feelings I have and then give me a solution as well. So I was really, really lucky to

meet your husband and make a, you know, gain a big brother. Well, he feels the same about you. And I think this is going to be a lifelong friendship and I am here for it. I think you guys compliment each other. So let's talk about mental health and sobriety. Where's your sobriety journey now? I'm completely sober from, from everything. I don't know. I don't drink anymore.

um i haven't drank since last august and you hold to that because i actually wanted you to have a drinking contest with my husband and you were like no i'm sober it just kills me because i just know i would have if you ever do we're not encouraging it but if you ever do please don't it was hard and when we were shooting lonely road and you know he rented out the bowling alley and the drinks kept coming i was that was like probably my the second night in this

process that i've had where i've ever just been looking and it was probably just from that place of ego where i was just like jelly i just want to drink you under the table in this high ass altitude after i've been sober yeah and then we showed up to set the same time the next day and i saw his condition and i saw mine and i was like i made the right choice no literally he tries to get me to drink it was rough he showed up and he was like bubba just tell me when tell me when the camera's rolling i'll uh

I'll step out when, right when it's time. - He texts me, he's like, "I'm so fucking hungover." I'm like, good. I love when he does that to himself because then it makes, he takes a break from drinking. So I'm like, yeah, you know, have a ball, honey, do whatever you, I said, it's high elevation, so just pace yourself. And he's like, I got this. I'm like, whatever. So you're sober off everything. Is your mental health better now that you're sober? Or is that when the real battle has begun? Because I know when I got sober in 2017,

It was sobriety sucks. It was the hardest journey that I went on because then I had to get to know, know myself. Yeah. And that was the real battle. I had to get to know myself without something in my system, you know, masking. That was really, I get mad at sobriety a lot. You know, that was, that is like a, I'm still in that phase of, of, uh, rebelling. Yeah. But you know, I, I didn't,

tell anybody outside of, you know, the closest to me, but I went to rehab right when we got off the European tour last year. And that was my first time I ever went to rehab. And man, they just gave me so many ways to operate the body and show where this like anger is coming from and methods to, to quell it. And, um,

I met with a lot of psychiatrists, some who gave up on me, and many therapists who did the same. But I ended up falling into an awareness of what my condition is and have made peace with it. And it's a constant tightrope walk. Can we speak on what the condition is? That one feels a little too...

brand new for me to confidently say, but I've also been able to have my art and that's kind of where I feel really comfortable. Um, take it out on and wood carving. You know, I like doing that. I like, you can whittle some wood. I can whittle some fucking wood. I fucking saw that video you posted. I was like, this is crazy. That takes forever.

Precision. Yeah. Yeah. That's my, my grandpa's a Norwegian, uh, wood carver. So Tommy Lee with the bonsais. Where Tommy's cold. He's cold with the bonsais. Uh, yeah. What else do I do? Take on my cats, be a volleyball dad, go on dates. Has Megan been a catalyst in your sobriety? I think all my friends, I think everyone's just really, yeah. I mean, absolutely. Megan has for sure been, um,

extremely helpful in dealing with the kind of psychological withdrawals that come with getting off drugs. Yeah. And being, and being, um, accepting that having fun isn't being, uh, self-medicated or like being, Hmm. Thanks. Sorry. I'm like, I'm, I'm bad at answering these questions cause I'm like new to all this. Um,

I think you're doing great. I think you've crushed this entire interview. Am I putting you to sleep over there? I've just been really happy seeing everybody, right? Like I love that I'm clear when I look at, you know, the person I love. I'm really happy that when I'm clear, when my daughter and I are having our conversations and I'm coming from a place of being centered and holding space for what,

a child needs from their parent you know which is patience and um advice that doesn't come from like i just want to get through this so i can go and satiate this desire yeah this like demon in me you know like that's been a huge reward for me and um i give a lot of props a lot of props to everyone around me for for never

quitting before I got to this point because I really hope I'm a lot more of like a pleasure to be around and I have it's funny this is this is my this is much my cat that kind of

Your emotional support cat? No, this is the troubled one. Really? This is me in cat form right here. But every time you talk about something serious or like you are kind of like tied up on your words, is it a he or she? It's a he. He chimes in. Have you noticed that? Yeah. He's like, I got you. I got you, dad. And he just purred for the first time in two years. So he was a lot like how I feel I was where, you know, Megan was.

She saw like who I truly was and she was just waiting for that to be able to come out, you know, because that's that's the reward when you have a soulmate is to be able to be Connected with that person's soul and when you're blocking it and covering it with all these things you weren't able to see it and you know same goes for You know Casey one of the biggest things that killed me and that relationship was when she would be like that I know when you're high so

that is like the ultimate sign of just disappointment in yourself. And yeah, I continue to embrace that this journey is going to be hard for me, but I accept it and forgive myself for, I really don't know. I'm also like really hard on myself, very self-deprecating. So I guess, yeah, I'm just happy that I'm able to start to

be comfortable enough to show people who I am because I kind of depended on my art to do that and you got to understand that a lot of people aren't going to listen to listen yeah so um and Jelly inspired me to do that too he was kind of like man you gotta you gotta get out there and talk and show people who you are I mean all my friends Maude huge huge advocate for being like man I just wish people could see who I see

Megan, huge advocate for that. Maude loves you. He started crying on the podcast when he was talking about you guys' friendship. I love him to death now, sitting in that sunken pit over there and smoke 30 cigarettes with him at 3 a.m. talking about life and bitching about sobriety and just getting it out there. You know, all my friends, like even when Slim came and Ashley's over there and all these people that have just been with me through this whole ride, I really just kind of

That thought of when you die, how will people remember you? I don't necessarily think it's, man, he made great songs. You want people to be like, man, what a great, you know, I could call on that person whenever I needed something. Like that person was always there for me. But you can't be there if your mind is on Neptune.

That's how they say people always remember you for how you made them feel. Ooh, that's a good one. Yeah, that's how I'm operating right now. I just like, I just. I think you're doing great. Dude, I suck at talking.

I think, I don't know. You did. We did about two and a half. We did about two hours, right? I think. Yeah. I think you did great. So wrapping up, what can we expect from you moving forward? Cause you did take it. Are we going back to rap? Are we going, are we staying in the rock genre? Are we just going to do whatever the fuck we feel like doing? I'm doing whatever the fuck I feel like doing. Atta boy.

- Country. Let's do country. - I'm doing whatever the fuck I feel like doing. I love rapping. I love playing my guitar. I love belting out whatever I'm holding inside in sentences that feel like an explanation of feelings. And yeah, I don't know. I would honestly say like at this point,

Nothing I've done will be repeated, so everything will be new, which will come with some more controversy. Only this time, both my feet are on the ground and I'm unstoppable. And I also don't give a fuck anymore. Art wins and heart wins. And I got both. Let's fucking go.

Well, I'm proud of you. And Kels, I think you did fucking phenomenal on this interview. Can we give him a round of applause? I think you did amazing. You did so good. Thank you, buddy. Dude, thank you for coming on the podcast. I'm so happy to have you. Thank you. My cats have absolutely shit up everything.

everywhere. I know you can smell it. I'm so sorry. We chose the room right next to where the litter box is. You're fine. It's totally fine. It was a vibe and we just loved being here. So thank you so much. And thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Dumb Blonde. We will see you guys next week. Bye. Across America, BP supports more than 300,000 jobs to keep our energy flowing.

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