Machine Gun Kelly (rapper)
| Machine Gun Kelly | |
|---|---|
MGK at his Lace Up Tour in 2013
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| Born |
Richard Colson Baker April 22, 1990 Houston, Texas, US |
| Residence | Cleveland, Ohio, US |
| Occupation |
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| Years active | 2006–present |
| Website | machinegunkelly |
| Musical career | |
| Genres | Hip hop |
| Instruments |
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| Labels |
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| Associated acts | |
Richard Colson Baker (born April 22, 1990), better known by his stage names MGK and Machine Gun Kelly, is an American rapper and actor, from Cleveland, Ohio. MGK embarked on a musical career as a teenager, releasing a mixtape in 2006. He would then go on to release four further mixtapes.
MGK then secured a recording contract with Bad Boy and Interscope Records in 2011. His major label debut album, Lace Up, was released in October 2012 to positive response from critics. The record contained the singles "Wild Boy", "Invincible", "Stereo", and "Hold On (Shut Up)", and debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200 chart; it was later confirmed to have sold more than 178,000 copies. In early 2015, he released the singles "Till I Die" and "A Little More" for his second studio album, General Admission, which released in October 2015, and also debuted at number four in the US. The album incorporated darker tones, rap rock, R&B, and storytelling.
MGK has also appeared in various films, starring in Beyond the Lights, as Kid Culprit. He would then star in Roadies as Wesley (a.k.a. Wes), before being cast in lead roles in Viral, Punk's Dead: SLC Punk 2 and Nerve.
Richard Colson Baker was born on April 22, 1990, in Houston, to missionary parents. MGK and his family moved all around the globe and took up residence abroad from Egypt to Germany, as well as throughout the United States, in Chicago, Denver, and Cleveland. He settled in Denver, along with his father, after his mother had left home, and the pair moved in with MGK's aunt. Following his father suffering from depression and unemployment, MGK endured bullying from other children in the neighborhood. He started listening to rap in the sixth grade, when he attended Hamilton Middle School, a school with an ethnically diverse student body in Denver, Colorado. The first three rappers that got him into the genre of hip hop as a child were Ludacris, Eminem and DMX, with MGK gaining severe interest in the genre after listening to DMX's "We Right Here" from the album The Great Depression (2001). MGK's home life was seldom stable, as he would regularly fight with his father. When he attended Denver's Thomas Jefferson High School, his father moved to Kuwait to work for the army and left him behind to live in his aunt's basement. During the course of living in the basement, MGK began experimenting with drugs and recorded his first amateur demo tape, "Stamp of Approval".
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