Days away from his sixth studio album, Mainstream Sellout, rapper-turned-rockstar Machine Gun Kelly recalls the first time he ever wrote music with his late father. While his upcoming album boasts contributions from Willow, Lil Wayne, and Bring Me The Horizon, he says the seal of approval that meant the most to him was that of his father.
Kelly’s father kicked him out of the house after high school. In an interview with Billboard, Kelly remembers writing his first song on guitar with his father, shortly before his death in 2020.
“In that moment, when he acknowledged my music and we bonded over a song, it gave me the richest memory I’ll ever have,” Kelly told Billboard. “To me, that was the ultimate success. And everything else that preceded that in our relationship didn’t matter because we had finally made it.”
Kelly’s father died on July 5, 2020, the one-year anniversary of his fourth album Hotel Diablo.
Later in the interview, Kelly admitted that he cringes watching old interviews of himself, noting that he was putting on an “exoskeleton of arrogance and cockiness.”
“I’m overcompensating so much for how I actually was inside,” he says. “I was scared to be myself.”
Mainstream Sellout is out 3/25 via Bad Boy/Interscope. Pre-save it here.