After reinventing himself as a pop-punk artist – putting out two electric guitar-heavy albums and collaborating with the likes of Travis Barker, Willow Smith and Bring Me The Horizon – Machine Gun Kelly has revealed plans to revert to rap for his next full-length.
Prior to 2020's Tickets to My Downfall – and subsequently this year's Mainstream Sellout – the Cleveland-born musician built his career as a rapper, releasing four full-length hip-hop albums, his most recent being 2019's Hotel Diablo.
Speaking to Audacy's Kevan Kenney in a new interview, MGK says he wants to once again build hype for his more guitar-driven material, and will take a break from pop-punk so that material is “missed”.
“If I keep doing things to prove things to people, I'm going to one, drive myself crazy and two, not make a good product,” he explains. “I made Tickets to My Downfall and Mainstream Sellout because I wanted to make them. I need to now also make people miss that sound.”
MGK says he's keen to complete his trilogy of pop-punk albums with a third offering in the future. “I don’t think making a third that’s so [similar] is going to be exciting unless it’s missed,” he says.
But for the time being, he's going to make a rap record for himself, “for no other reason, [with] no point to prove, [and with] no chip on my shoulder”.
“I'm gonna step into where I left Hotel Diablo, expand on my storytelling as a rapper and find a new innovative sound for the hip-hop Machine Gun Kelly,” he continues. “That's where my excitement is and where me as a music archaeologist wants to explore.”
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While Machine Gun Kelly still has some touring to do in support of Mainstream Sellout, it's likely given his announcement that we won't see a new signature MGK Schecter model – as hinted by the album's artwork – any time soon.
The guitar – which MGK is holding while being pelted by pink tomatoes, apparently – is a blacked-out version of his single-humbucker Schecter PT, complete with subtle pink appointments and ‘Sellout!’ inlays on frets one through eight.
In other news, last month MGK was accused by a TikTok user of faking his guitar playing onstage, a claim he subsequently refuted.
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Sam was Staff Writer at GuitarWorld.com from 2019 to 2023, and also created content for Total Guitar, Guitarist and Guitar Player. He has well over 15 years of guitar playing under his belt, as well as a degree in Music Technology (Mixing and Mastering). He's a metalhead through and through, but has a thorough appreciation for all genres of music. In his spare time, Sam creates point-of-view guitar lesson videos on YouTube under the name Sightline Guitar.
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