Machine Gun Kelly seems to regret the feud he started with Slipknot’s Corey Taylor. In a segment of his new documentary, Life in pinkthe rapper-turned-pop-punk reflects on the nasty back-and-forth he had with the nu-metal frontman, all of which spilled over into the audience last year when MGK spontaneously dissed Slipknot onstage at the Riot Fest of 2021. Shortly after, the General public sale the songwriter took to Twitter to say that Taylor was supposed to do a verse for his album, but “it was fucking terrible so I didn’t use it. He got mad at that subject and talked shit to a magazine about the same album he was almost on.”
“I hate all new rock, for the most part,” Taylor said during the interview in question. “The ‘artists’ who failed in a genre and decided to rock…and I think he knows who he is.”
From there, Taylor released his own version of the story that portrayed MGK as the bitter one who got angry when he respectfully declined to participate in the album, and then Slipknot fans took the feud to heart. hand and booed MGK at Louder Than Life just for showing his face at a metal festival. As recently as January this year, Taylor said MGK could “suck every inch of my dick”, so it didn’t seem like forgiveness was on the horizon.
That said, MGK took a more zen and admittedly more mature approach to the whole situation when he had the opportunity to comment on it in his own documentary.
“It’s funny, the whole Slipknot problem — which really isn’t a Slipknot problem, it’s a Corey problem,” he said, as transcribed by The pit. “This situation is unfortunate because I think we both let our egos get in the way.
“You know, I was a Slipknot fan. I was a Corey fan. That’s why I asked him to come up [my 2020 album] Tickets for my fall. He obviously had mutual respect too, because he cut a verse.
“I kind of tried to return notes, like, ‘Oh, you know, that wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, can we try that?’ And respectfully, he was like, you know, ‘no.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, cool.’ So we didn’t use it. You know, then I heard it on a podcast.”
The statement he’s referring to is one in which Taylor said he hated all modern rock musicians, especially those who “failed at one genre and decided to go rock”, which seemed like a definite be a sharp target for Kelly.
“This narrative has always confused me,” Kelly continued in her documentary. “My most successful album is the one I just released. [2019’s] Hotel Diabloit’s a rap album that has over a billion streams.”
“I could have handled it differently,” he concluded. “I should have just picked up the phone and been like ‘hey man, why are you saying that’? But instead we all acted ridiculous.”
Now we’ll have to wait and see if Taylor accepts this near olive branch. But we have to tell MGK that at least he’s mature enough to admit shit went off the rails where it really didn’t need to.
