Since emerging as a hyperactive, scaffolding-scaling rapper in the early 2010s, MGK — formerly Machine Gun Kelly, born Colson Baker — has forged his own path through the pop-cultural consciousness. He’s feuded with Eminem; he’s engaged in egregious red-carpet PDA with his onetime flame Megan Fox; he’s acted in movies and TV, with his full-body channeling of Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee being a highlight of the hard rockers’ 2019 biopic The Dirt. And, oh yes, he’s released records.
In 2020, MGK fully pivoted from hip-hop to pop-punk with Tickets to My Downfall, a collection of punchy, hooky cuts that included the spittle-flecked Halsey duet “Forget Me Too” and the trap-tinged blackbear collab “My Ex’s Best Friend.” He continued playing with genre in the ensuing years, even calling his brand of bummed-out emo-rap “sadboy” on a 2024 joint EP with fellow Ohioan Trippie Redd.
Mgk has always had a quintessentially — if oddly — American public-facing persona, which was only highlighted by how he managed to get Bob Dylan to provide a voiceover for the album’s trailer. (Dylan called MGK’s latest work, “ music that celebrates the beauty found in the in-between spaces.”) On his seventh album, he musically and thematically updates the concept of “heartland rock,” the storytelling-heavy, road-trip-ready strain of guitar music made by the likes of John Cougar Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen.
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Opening track “Outlaw Overture” announces itself with a heat-lightning blast of synths that leads to a pugilistic defense of his rebellious nature, then shape-shifts into starlit balladry that further reveals MGK’s truly American dream: “Take me somewhere cheap/Where the livin’ is easy/Out of all their reach/Set my spirit free,” he wails, extending the last “e” sound to the length of an interstate. “Indigo” shows the way hip-hop has become part of American pop music’s fabric, his knotty rhymes detailing the tribulations he’s endured over the last few years; “Sweet Coraline” uses Strokes-inspired guitar choppiness to illustrate the unsettling feeling of being treated like an avatar of celebrity in real life.
MGK’s let-it-all-hang-out persona is the real star of the show, and his lyrics — which will no doubt be pored over by people looking for more details on his love life — are often razor-sharp: “Only lights on my horizon are ones that pull me over,” he muses on the camaraderie-dappled “miss sunshine.” That quality makes “Cliché” feels like an in-joke that should have stayed in the studio, combining well-worn lyrical tropes (“Baby, I’m a rolling stone,” “You should run away with me/Even if you’re better off alone”) with music that splits the difference between ‘00s adult contemporary and modern pop-country. But it also shows how MGK, who at 35 has already lived at least two lifetimes of stardom, is, for better or worse, always in perpetual motion.
