{"id":525150,"date":"2026-06-08T21:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T21:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/525150\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T21:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T21:16:14","slug":"mgk-interview-on-blog-era-boys-his-blackout-tattoo-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/525150\/","title":{"rendered":"mgk Interview: On ‘Blog Era Boys,’ His Blackout Tattoo & More"},"content":{"rendered":"

mgk has covered the chaos that\u2019s been written all over him.<\/p>\n

For nearly two decades, he\u2019s been one of the most restless forces in music. He\u2019s evolved from a Cleveland rap underdog into a global, multi-genre king hitting the charts in every style he records in: pop-punk, nu-metal, even country.<\/p>\n

Now, he\u2019s made his long-awaited return to hip-hop, releasing his new Blog Era Boyz collaborative mixtape with his Lost Americana tourmate Wiz Khalifa that recaptures the sound and spirit of his 2000s and 2010s come-up as Machine Gun Kelly.<\/p>\n

To get there, the man underneath the persona, Colson Baker, needed more than a new sound. He needed a total blackout. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was looking for a change that wasn’t just a sound wave,\u201d he reflects to Billboard Canada over the phone from Austin, Texas. \u201cIt had to be something physical.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked in the mirror and saw the mishmash of tattoos all over his body. He had been inked and then inked back over with different designs, some reminding him of phases in his life he didn\u2019t \u2014 or didn\u2019t want to \u2014 remember. Seeing pictures, he sometimes didn\u2019t recognize himself. <\/p>\n

He was confronted by a question: \u201cWho the f\u2014 am I?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw death and drugs in all these patterns that I was literally writing on my body,\u201d he says. \u201cThere were happy tattoos, sad tattoos, holy tattoos, hellish tattoos. It was like my bipolarity was screaming off my skin.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same way he was reinventing his sound, he wanted to reinvent his body. <\/p>\n

He found the solution in celebrity tattoo artist ROXX, who also shot this Billboard Canada cover with mgk. ROXX is known for huge, geometric pieces and coverwork, and when she showed him her initial design, he was in immediately. It was a massive \u201cdark mode\u201d tattoo that covered the vast majority of his arms, chest and stomach in ink.<\/p>\n

There was just one problem. To execute a piece that monumental, it was going to take two years. But mgk didn\u2019t have two years. He had two months. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe warned me that it was going to be near impossible, even from a pain tolerance standpoint,\u201d he says. \u201cI said, \u2018yeah, we got two months.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of the recommended slow and steady process, building in breaks for healing, Baker started his own process. He\u2019d wake up each morning, travel 15 minutes to her L.A. studio, and get under the needle. <\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the first week, we hit my lymph nodes around my armpits and shoulders, and I got really sick. My skin was turning yellow. I wasn\u2019t able to sleep. I stopped being able to move certain parts of my upper body.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he pushed through. He saw it as both a physical and a metaphorical obstacle, something he had to overcome to get to where he needed to be both personally and professionally. He emerged a new man, less chaotic, clear-headed, and with his pen moving at 100 miles per hour. <\/p>\n

\u201cI came out the other side extremely inspired,\u201d he affirms. \u201cNot just because of what I had done, but because of what I had to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"mgk mgk photographed by Roxx in Los Angeles in May 2026. Hair by Aaron King, grooming by Sonia Lee.<\/p>\n

For mgk, this decade has been defined by constant reinvention. <\/p>\n

In 2020, he adopted a larger-than-life rock star persona, picking up a guitar, spiking his hair like Jorge Herrera of The Casualties and linking up with producer and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. Tickets To My Downfall merged his hip-hop bounce with sounds that harken back to the 2000s commercial peak of pop-punk. The album peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart and U.S. Billboard 200, helping fuel a mainstream resurgence of the genre. Its follow-up, 2022\u2019s Mainstream Sellout, was another hit, again reaching No. 1 in both countries.<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, though, Baker says he was going through dark times. He was privately grieving the 2020 death of his father, navigating his life with bipolar disorder and his struggles with drugs and alcohol. At the 2022 Billboard Music Awards<\/a>, he performed a vulnerable stripped-back rendition of \u201cTwin Flame\u201d dedicated to his then-fianc\u00e9e Megan Fox and their \u201cunborn child,\u201d which they revealed to be a lost pregnancy. <\/p>\n

In 2023, around the time the couple called off their engagement, Baker went to rehab. By the time he started his tattoo, they were expecting their child, Saga Blade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that time in my life, I was wearing a bunch of shame from personal mistakes I was making,\u201d he reflects. \u201cI was dealing with sobriety really heavy, having itches that I didn’t know how to scratch. I was losing myself in obsessiveness with work, instead of prioritizing things that are actually much more important, which is family and self-worth that doesn’t need to come from outside validation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baker released Lost Americana in 2025, officially changing his name from Machine Gun Kelly to mgk. The album mixed in elements of pop and country, expanding his sound even more. He surprised fans with special pop-up underplay shows at Toronto\u2019s Horseshoe Tavern and Sunrise Records at Square One in Mississauga, Ontario. <\/p>\n

But that wasn\u2019t the last of his surprises. <\/p>\n

\"mgk mgk photographed by Roxx in Los Angeles in May 2026. Hair by Aaron King, grooming by Sonia Lee.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you got a second? Can you just stay with me on the phone?\u201d Baker asks. \u201cI just gotta do this throwback post real quick.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few minutes later, I see he\u2019s posted on Instagram with the album cover of Blog Era Boyz, his new mixtape with Wiz Khalifa. It\u2019s a new release \u2014 the day we\u2019re talking is the day it came out \u2014 but it evokes all the spirit of the 2010s, when DatPiff mixtape downloads held more currency for hip-hop heads than Spotify streams, curators like Pigeons and Planes and 2 Dope Boyz could make a young rapper\u2019s career and young artists like Wiz and Machine Gun Kelly (as he was then known) could break out on the back of a good feature. <\/p>\n

Like the Fred Durst-featuring Limp Bizkit style rock (\u201cFix Ur Face\u201d) and pop-punk interpolations of his previous albums, it\u2019s ax throwback to the 2000s and 2010s \u2014 but this time it\u2019s a throwback to the music he was actually making at the time. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor the past four albums, I\u2019ve tried to create something defiant, sonically, from whatever the previous project was,\u201d he explains. \u201cThis one I’m just going back to straight house recording studio roots, rapping over classic beats. The only sonics that matter is if you can bop your head through it and the bars are hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a return to innocence for Baker, who has spent the last decade branching out musically but going through heavy times, personally. <\/p>\n

What Baker values most about the blog era was the closeness artists were able to build with their fans because they were making music without expectations. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no stakes,\u201d he says. \u201cThere wasn’t anything to lose. We were just making music ’cause we liked making it, and we all hoped that it would reach people. We didn’t get strung along on overthought rollouts, or lose the identity of the artist through that label push.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n

Many of the artists of that era became alienated from their fan bases, he theorizes, because they signed to major labels and were forced to reckon with higher stakes and more pressure. Artists began to overthink or overcompensate, and the music became less free. It became less fun. They were no longer doing it for the thrill of it.<\/p>\n

As much as it was about himself, Baker says he made the tape because he was such a fan of Wiz Khalifa. He was able to A&R the project to recapture the classic period of his old friend, who he calls his favourite rapper of the blog era. <\/p>\n

The first song they did together was \u201cGirl Next Door,\u201d<\/a> a bright track that Baker compares to Wiz Khalifa\u2019s 2009 classic \u201cThe Thrill\u201d \u2014 a song that never charted because of its unlicensed Empire of the Sun sample (as was the case with many mixtape beats) but remains a streaming juggernaut. It was initially meant to be a one-off for the two soon-to-be tourmates, but that changed as soon as they played the song back.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were like, \u2018Dude, we’re about to go on a fun summer tour. We\u2019re going to be outside with our fans. Let’s give them the full experience, dude. Let’s just fill the ashtrays up, and record until the tour buses are outside.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That turned out to be surprisingly literal. \u201cMPH\u201d was the final song the two did together, with Baker challenging Wiz to create a song where they both rap as fast as they used to. Their collaborators had already left for rehearsals, so they recorded over a beat Baker already had on his phone. The tape wasn\u2019t finished until the day they left for tour. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I found out that, to release something, it still costs a bunch of money,\u201d he says. \u201cYou have to pay everybody. Videos don’t shoot themselves for free. We had to rent a whole block to do that \u2018Girl Next Door\u2019 video.\u201d <\/p>\n

For Baker, though, it was worth it for the fans. So, he took $1 million out of the budget of his next album to make it happen.<\/p>\n

\"mgk <\/p>\n

That million dollar gamble isn\u2019t just about his fans, though. It\u2019s a claim on his legacy. Listening to the classics of the blog era, mgk realizes he was right there for most of it. He was one of the key figures. But, he feels, the industry often undervalues him or journalists undermine him \u2014 even while fans both old and new pack his shows. It\u2019s not just about celebrating the sounds of the past, but the people who made them \u2014 some of whom are still very prolific, driving culture forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes the industry overlooks what’s actually needed in the game for what they think is new,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat I\u2019m seeing is that they\u2019re looking for something that has actually been in front of their eyes the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as much as recapturing a past era of music, it was about recapturing a lost feeling in himself \u2014 the Lost Americana of his youth, and of his current tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about burning CDs and playing our favourite music, scrounging up enough money to buy some shitty weed, poking 3 holes in an apple to smoke it, and skating and just laughing,\u201d he says wistfully. \u201cAll these simple things have been lost in a day and age that’s full of overconsumption, overstimulation, overthinking, overcriticizing. Back then, we didn’t realize that simplicity was fleeting as you grow older.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sees that in his oldest daughter Casie, who is 16. Driving around with her, he\u2019s often surprised by the music she chooses: 2010s R&B, Migos, even some blog era favourites like Mac Miller.<\/p>\n

\u201cDude, she has the coldest playlist,\u201d he says. \u201cI always let her get the aux.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Baker has another daughter, Saga Blade, the one-year-old he co-parents with Megan Fox. He\u2019s determined not to make the same mistakes twice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were times when [Casie] was growing up where my eyes were physically open, but I was not there,\u201d he says. \u201cThe only thing that you leave this earth with when you’re getting ready to close your eyes for the final time, it\u2019s the memories that you’ve made \u2014 and I’m done forgetting. My kids are the purest part of my existence. That\u2019s what I want to remember.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, it\u2019s summertime, what Baker calls \u201cthe ultimate nostalgia bait.\u201d These are the times his young fans will look back on in a decade, and he wants to give them an experience they will remember. In a world that feels very heavy, he wants to create something for himself and for his fans that feels good.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just gonna have fun,\u201d he declares. \u201cI’ve lived a very tormented life. I don’t need to wear that 24\/7.\u201d<\/p>\n

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