- Byname of:
- Colson Baker
- MGK also styled:
- mgk
- Formerly:
- Machine Gun Kelly
MGK
What is MGK’s real name?
How did MGK start his music career?
What was MGK’s feud with Eminem?
MGK (born April 22, 1990, Houston, Texas, U.S.) is an American musician and actor known for his rapid-fire rapping, energetic style, high-profile feuds, and sometimes tumultuous personal life. After starting out in rap in the early 2000s, he successfully crossed over into the rock and pop genres.
Early life and music career
Colson Baker was born in Houston to missionary parents. When he was a child, his family moved frequently, including to Egypt and Germany. His mother left when Baker was nine years old, and he and his father, who suffered from mental health issues, moved in with Baker’s aunt in Denver. They later settled in Cleveland, which Baker considers to be his hometown.
Baker lived in poverty throughout his school years and was bullied by classmates. To escape his problems, he started listening to rap music in middle school and soon after began creating his own raps. His plans for stardom were ridiculed by his peers at school. In 2020 he recalled to The New York Times, “They were like, ‘Dude, shut up. We’re in math class. In Cleveland.’ ” By the time he was 17, however, he was performing regularly and had released his first mixtape, Stamp of Approval (2007), under the stage name Machine Gun Kelly—after the Prohibition-era gangster of the same moniker. The name was a nod to his rapid “spitting bullets” style of rapping. His fans began calling him MGK, and he used both names interchangeably in his early career.
Baker’s father evicted him soon after his high school graduation. To support himself Baker worked at the burrito chain Chipotle while making music from his self-built home studio. In 2009, when he was 19, Baker and his then-girlfriend had a daughter, Casie Colson Baker. The musician got his first break that same year when he participated in and won back-to-back amateur night showcases at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York City. According to Baker, at first he was booed when he appeared on the stage.
Studio albums and feud with Eminem
In 2010 Baker released the single “Alice in Wonderland.” The next year, after a performance at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, he was approached by hip-hop artist and producer Sean Combs, also known as P. Diddy, who offered Baker a record deal with Bad Boy/Interscope. His first album for the label, Lace Up, was released in 2012. With subjects that included his fight with heroin addiction, its songs did not shy away from Baker’s past trauma. The single “Wild Boy,” featuring guest rapper Waka Flocka Flame, earned Baker a spot on the Billboard Hot 100. His next studio album, General Admission, was released in 2015 to mixed reviews, although it debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 chart. He followed up with Bloom in 2017, which saw him experimenting with a new radio-friendly sound and singing on some tracks. That album featured the song “Bad Things,” a remake of Fastball’s 1999 hit “Out of My Head” with guest singer Camila Cabello.
In 2018 fellow rapper Eminem, whom Baker has cited as an inspiration, included several lines slamming Baker in his song “Not Alike”: “I’m talkin’ to you, but you already know who the f*** you are, Kelly / I don’t use sublims and sure as f*** don’t sneak-diss / But keep commenting on my daughter Hailie.” The lyrics referred to a 2012 tweet by Baker in which he commented on the attractiveness of Eminem’s then-teenage daughter in rather explicit terms. In response to “Not Alike,” Baker penned the diss track “Rap Devil,” a jab at Eminem’s hit song “Rap God.” The beef between the two continued for several years.
In 2019 Baker released his fourth studio album, Hotel Diablo, which also dealt strongly with his personal life, including songs about his drug use and a suicide attempt. After its release he told Cleveland.com, “I write my best stuff when I’m sad. So I just let the sadness in.” During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020, Baker released a series of videos on social media in which he covered songs in multiple genres. They racked up millions of views and were a sign of things to come in his music.
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That same year he released Tickets to My Downfall, which was produced by Travis Barker of the pop-punk band blink-182. The album marked a turning point in Baker’s sound as he explored outside the rap genre to expand into emo, rock, and punk. As he told The New York Times ahead of its release, “It took me 10 years to evolve into this sound.” Tickets to My Downfall topped the Billboard charts, as did his next album, Mainstream Sellout (2022), which was also produced by Barker and earned Baker his first Grammy nomination for best rock album. He followed up with Lost Americana in 2025. By this time Baker had rebranded his stage name as solely MGK, usually styled as mgk; his decision to stop using the Machine Gun Kelly moniker was inspired by activists who noted that his original stage name appeared to glorify guns.
Acting career
In addition to his music career, Baker has appeared in several films and television series. The first of these was Beyond the Lights (2014), a romantic drama in which he plays a rapper. He also appeared in Nerve (2016) opposite Emma Roberts, and that same year he portrayed a former Pearl Jam roadie in Cameron Crowe’s TV dramedy Roadies. In 2018 he appeared in Netflix’s hit post-apocalyptic horror film Bird Box. The next year he starred as heavy metal drummer Tommy Lee in the acclaimed Mӧtley Crüe biopic The Dirt. In 2022 Baker teamed up with Mod Sun to write and direct the film Good Mourning, a stoner comedy in which he plays a movie star.
Other projects and personal life
In 2020 Baker opened a coffee house, 27 Club Coffee, in Cleveland; the venue is named for the infamous roster of musicians who died when they were 27. That year he also began a high-profile romance with actress Megan Fox, whom he met on the set of the film Midnight in the Switchgrass (2021). They had a tempestuous on-again, off-again relationship, and in 2025 Fox gave birth to their daughter, Saga Blade Fox-Baker.