#Interview i am gangster movie

That’s why the project was ironically my best received one, because it was the most effortless, with the least outside influence. The next album came from already feeling like I’d counted out, so I didn’t even care what the public was going to think. What I did in the beef was exactly what it should be, but that project wasn’t welcomed.

#Interview i am gangster movie

It’s like if you make a shitty movie and then you come out with a great movie right after, but people want to focus on the fact that they hated whatever you just did. So no one wanted to give it the time of day. But it was coming off the tail-end of that infamous beef. As a hip-hop album, it’s flawless front to back, and also a hint at the evolution of how I went into a pop-punk album. Hotel Diablo is that for me, because that was the first time I really expressed my true self with no outside influence, meaning the label. I would just sit there like, “What am I missing?” The chemicals in my formula weren’t right, because I wasn’t fully open yet.įRANCO: Were there moments when you almost gave up because you were killing yourself for your music and it still felt like you were misunderstood? I was more motivated by the fact that no one understood me every single time an album dropped. That is the peak of the fans interest in you, because that’s you spilling your whole life. Your first or second album, for the most part, is your best work, or your highest-selling work. That doesn’t make any sense in the history of how musicians usually come out. KELLY: My fifth album is my most well-received, my highest-selling, my biggest debut. Now, the image and the lyrics kind of meet in the middle.įRANCO: That leads me to the next question: how much are you fueled by haters? I was vulnerable in my writing, but people didn’t look past my image.

Now there’s this beautiful vulnerability that everyone’s expressing, with artists like Juice WRLD, rest in peace, and Lil Peep, rest in peace. Hip-hop is such a pit-bull industry, meaning you want to be the toughest one in the cage. It took my name being said to me to snap out of it. KELLY: It wasn’t like I went into it saying, “I’m going to be this character.” It was just that they fused somewhere along the way and I didn’t even notice it. When you take on that moniker, you take on some of that energy. KELLY: I’ve been Machine Gun Kelly since I was 15, so how can you even differentiate? When you grow up and that’s the only name you have, you embody that person. Whereas with Machine Gun Kelly, it was like I had a giant middle finger out in front of whatever was happening.įRANCO: Did it feel like you were putting on a character with Machine Gun Kelly? When I was doing the show with Cameron Crowe, it was the beginning of me hearing my own name again, and it was like the name triggered an innocence. I think there is a boyishness to me as an actor that directors see in me, because there’s no shell and I don’t have a character’s name in front of me. Do people in the music world treat you differently than people in the movie business? Everything that’s happening now, I feel like I was in the car manifesting it.įRANCO: It’s incredible. It’s crazy because I feel like I was always pitching these dreams to you when we were in those car rides to work. First off, I just want to say that I’m so happy for everything that’s happening to you, man. So good to see your face.įRANCO: Back at you. But, as he tells his friend and former co-star Dave Franco, not too much of it. After weathering the ensuing tabloid storm, the two have since settled into a relationship that Kelly admits has afforded him a measure of peace. But that was the old MGK, written before he met Fox on the set of their upcoming thriller, Midnight in the Switchgrass. And while this new collection of songs is sugar-coated with big hooks and is perfectly engineered for getting day-drunk by the pool, Kelly, who also directed the upcoming musical Downfalls High, returns to some heavy themes: addiction, heartbreak, and self-destructive behavior. Trading his mic for a hot pink guitar naturally brought out the critics who had a lot less to say when the album, packed with anthemic earworms that recall the early aughts (the Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker co-produced the album), topped the Billboard 200 chart in its first week. Born Colson Baker, and known to his fans as MGK, Kelly took a hard pivot this year, from rap music into pop-punk territory, with his fifth record, Tickets to My Downfall. While the world reeled, the 30-year-old musician and actor put out his first number-one hit album and fell in love with Megan Fox. Necklaces (throughout) by GLD.Ģ020 has been the year from hell, unless your name is Machine Gun Kelly.