Dumb Blonde - MGK: Road to Forgiveness

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Strap in for Season 8, babies! Bunnie sits down with Machine Gun Kelly for a vulnerable, no-holds-barred conversation. MGK opens up about his tumultuous past, from childhood trauma to his complicated relationship with his mom, and shares his journey to forgiveness. He goes deep into his evolution from battle rap to rock stardom, discussing why it's okay to blaze your own path as an artist. MGK gets candid about finding love with Megan Fox, his sobriety journey, and touching fatherhood moments with daughter Casie. He talks about his new collab with Jelly Roll, "Lonely Road", and gets us all misty talking about their beautiful friendship. MGK: Website | "Lonely Road" Watch Full Episodes & More:www.dumbblondeunrated.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

All right, guys, it's a new year. And you know what that means. Out with the old, in with the new. But I do gotta say one thing. I will be bringing old with me into the new year. Lume whole body deodorant is the bee's knees, baby. I know when I go out on New Year's Eve and I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off,

I don't have to worry about sweating or smelling. Because why? I got Lume on. Clinically proven to block odor all day and control odor for up to 72 hours. All Lume products are baking soda free, paraben free, and pH balanced for safe use below the waist. As a special offer, new customers get 15% off. All Lume products with our exclusive code.

Use code BUNNYXO at LumeDeodorant.com. That's L-U-M-E-D-E-O-D-O-R-A-N-T.com. Lume's solid deodorant stick is formulated and powered by mandelic acid to stop odor before it starts. It also provides 72-hour odor and sweat control for pits, privates, and beyond. Lume's starter pack is perfect for new customers. It comes with a solid stick deodorant, cream tube deodorant, two free products of your choice like a mini body wash and deodorant wipes, and free shipping. Once again, as a special offer for listeners, new customers get 15% off all Lumi products with our exclusive code. And if you combine the 15% off with the already discounted starter pack, that equals over 40% off their starter pack.

That's code bunny XO at L U M E D E O Da-n-t dot com for 15% off your first purchase. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Smell fresher, stay drier, and boost your confidence from head to toe with Lume. I don't care what anybody says. It doesn't matter what time of year it is. I never get tired of online shopping, especially during the holidays. Here's the thing. It's kind of gross out.

Even those of us that embrace the chilly weather need something to break up long winter nights. Something I love to do is treat myself to a little something, but I don't want to spend a fortune on my winter blues. That's where Quince comes in. I'm absolutely obsessed with my Quince luggages. I took them on tour. I brought them home and they're still like brand new. I'm pretty much obsessed with this brand, but there is something else that everyone needs in their closet, in my opinion. Quince's iconic Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which start at $50. Or if you want to really up the luxe factor, check out their Italian leather handbags, washable silk skirts, and European linen sheet sets.

Whatever you're looking for, all Quince items are priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices. Treat yourself this winter without the luxury price tag. Go to quince.com slash B-U-N-N-I-E for 365-day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash bunny, B-U-N-N-I-E, to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash bunny. Hey guys, I need to ask you

a question. I want to know why in the hell are you not on Patreon? I don't think you guys even realize how much content we have on Patreon. Let me break it down for you. We have the Bunny XO Show. We have Meet the D-Fords. We have Popaganda. We have more shows that we're adding. And not to mention, we have the visuals of the podcast. Not only that, we have four tiers that caters to everybody's budget and everybody gets the podcast. There's no more excuses.

Head over to www.patreon.com backslash dumb blonde podcast and sign up. Stop missing out. We have built a huge community over there, guys. I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of people over there. We even have live chats, live chats that I actually am talking in every single night. Last but not least, we give away gifts every freaking month i'm talking like signed stuff from jay and i lives you just never know what kind of surprise you're gonna get it's like a crackerjack box i love the community that we've built over there at patreon if you are already a patreon member i freaking love you dude thank you so much you guys are my babies for life my writers if i could i would literally make out with each and every one of you i love you guys are my babies for life my writers if i could i would literally make out with each

and every one of you i love you guys so much and that's a lot of kisses actually gotta go bye bunny xo's a vegas group bunny xo's dumb blonde podcast and bunny xo's bunny xo's Hold on, Barney. Is this thing on? Hi, babies. Welcome back to season eight. Today, I have a triple threat. I mean, I don't even know. I think he might be a quadruple threat, but this man needs no introduction. Mr. MGK in the house, baby. Hello the house baby hi everybody you've had a day i've had yeah it's been a gnarly 96 hours for sure i feel like you

don't ever stop though no this was my first four-day music video shoot which you were in yeah cool and thank you for having us let's talk about it what what was what was the video shoot about um well it was uh visually inspired by beyond the pines i think story-wise as well um the first 20 minutes anyway yeah if you guys are gonna watch if you're gonna watch beyond the pine don't watch any more than 30 after r Ryan Gosling has his moment, don't watch it. It's quite the... Thrill kill. Yeah.

It's like a thrill and then it's just like, what happened? It happens and you're like, wait a minute. He's on every poster. The movie has to be about him. Yeah, that was kind of a trip. But aesthetically, I love riding motorcycles. I think telling the story of a lower middle class struggling family and relationship is really what I grew up seeing. So it was something that felt right to do on a song that everyone keeps telling me is a hit. So I think the glamorous approach was obvious,

and I kind of went the other way and kept it G, like how me and Jelly's background is. You guys went back to your roots. I think absolutely. background is you guys went back to your roots i think absolutely i think like you know we repped for you know when you get it when you are exploring yourself in front of all these cameras and in the industry um sorry guys these are some beautiful cats by the way yeah these are some awesome cats that just walked in they're like dad's home but when you're exploring yourself in front of the cameras and you know you're seeing success and you know you obviously idolize people and lifestyles and things you kind of you know

you're you're doing your own outfit changes uh metaphorically towards what you think would look cool with this era what would look cool with that era and this era for me after uh all the glitz and glam of the last run that i've had is just back to my roots man i went all the way to the top and i am just like all right i've seen it i'm so excited i'm out i'm so excited to deep dive all of this with you um so circling back to the video though so the song is for lonely roads which my husband is going to be featuring on and that's out right now yes because when by the time this drops it's going to be out so you guys need to go listen to it yeah and when do you think the music video is going to drop is it going to drop before i think the music video is going to drop? Is it going to drop before?

I think the music video will be out by the time this is out. So you guys got to go watch it. Yeah. Cause it's going to be awesome. I feel really, I don't really know what to do with my hands. Is it cool? Yeah,

of course I would sit back, you know, this is your house. So I'm telling you what to do on your couch. So you have talked a lot about your childhood, and I just kind of want to go back in time a little bit with you on that. Can we speak on your childhood a little bit? Yeah.

If I've spoken on my childhood, you know, if you're reflecting on past interviews, I don't really know how far they go back, but some of them was a very insecure, excuse me, insecure with speaking on just almost any interview I had done in which I covered myself with a egoic exoskeleton but as far as my childhood some of that I've spoke on in a way that I was still just very confused and very angry. And so I do not stand by everything that I said about the people in my life and my childhood because they deserve forgiveness and something different than the way that I may have.

Just, you know. So anyway, I proceeded with the question. That actually kind of made me want to tear up because anybody that's ever let me get a hold of myself here anybody that's ever dealt with childhood trauma has gone through a time in their life where they were just so angry that they've said so many things about the people that were in their life that until you get to a breakthrough and you come i don't want to say come out of the darkness because I feel like we're always sort of gonna have one foot in but when you get to a point where you can look at them with love or

forgiveness is huge and they're just big kids as a parent I don't know what the fuck I'm doing every single day of my life as a parent. You're just figuring it out constantly, but hopefully doing it with love. Absolutely. Like in my situation with my father, he was so tormented from some of the most insane shit that I could imagine a kid could go through that he had to figure it out. But with almost every possible bad circumstance going against them too so it's it's it's almost like the expectations are too high because we think uh that they're just that that they know everything because we grew up looking up at them yeah we we're all just lost and trying to figure it out.

I feel like you've been fighting since you came out of the womb. I'm just looking down at my notes here. But it says, you know, you were born with your umbilical cord wrapped around your neck, correct? Yeah. So, I mean, you were already fighting the minute that you came out. Yeah. When you were born, you had your mom and your dad i don't ever really hear you talk about your mom a lot and a lot of the stuff that i got from your childhood i didn't

take from interviews i kind of you if you listen to your music you tell a story right you speak a lot about your life in music and i think that anybody that is you know a fan of yours or a listener of yours would know them? Yeah, I saved a lot of my interview moments for my lyrics. So I think a lot of my childhood is represented in my songs. My mom and I actually have reconnected in a really intense way in the past three or four years. You know, that's how my family is, they're all from Norway, they're extremely Norwegian, so very stoic, you know, so the emotional side of things

I get from my father who was very, you know, he wore everything on his sleeve, right? So, like, his depression was very obvious. His need for love was very, you know, like, I wish I could have told him before he died that I was really inspired by how emotional he was. I thought that was really cool in hindsight because I am very emotional as well. Probably because everything on my chart is so Pisces. I was saying that on July 5th, it's the same day Hotel Diablo came out, but that's also the day he died, and it trips me out because on the album,

I said, doctors said my dad won't be here a year from now, and then a year to the date he died, and then on that date this year, I was outside, and I was doing a ritual for him just to try and see if I could channel any if I could hear him at all but I did tell him what I what I just said sorry if I'm very long-winded I'm pretty awkward as a human and so I don't really know if what I'm saying if anyone gives a fuck so maybe I'll just move on what was it what's the next question you don't really know what I'm saying if anyone gives a fuck. So maybe I'll just move on. What was the next question?

You don't have to apologize, though. It's actually beautiful what you say. And it's so real. And I think people need to hear what you have to say because there's a lot of people who are working through, including myself, who I just lost my dad last month. And I know exactly what you're going through with a father a father who was absent you know in certain things and like you know just we're all dealing with childhood trauma but um your dad actually it says that um your dad was tried at nine years old for his own father's death yeah can we talk about that? I think so.

That's interesting that you... Yeah. Yeah, sure. That has to contribute to how he was as a father to you because it seems like it was almost generational, like passed down. Yeah, every medium that I've spoke to or seer that I've spoke to says there's a generational curse on all the men in my family that they will die alone, and they've all died alone. I'm the seventh generation,

which means that I should be able to break the curse, and I was born on the 22nd, which is a master master number and the numerology behind mine is a curse breaker so I do hope in this lifetime that I master my best self and what I'm supposed to do it's a very difficult road that I'm on right now with that and my father's uh childhood journey definitely bled into mind because we uh we shared the same bed the same bed for um years and that was you know the the body especially if you're intuitive or born intuitive your body receives the energy from all around you so you know those years that my dad slept um depressed i took on all that and uh i just remember finding that i always used to

get so mad at him when i was a kid because if i scared him or he heard a loud boom or a loud noise he would freak out like gnarly freak out and i would be like you're supposed to be like you're supposed to be a man dude like why are you acting like this and i would we would you know it just it made me hate him and then you sit there and you think about a kid who was on trial at nine years old for the murder of his father and knowing that the police came and found the shotgun underneath the bed and the story that was told to me was always that you know their dad dropped the gun and his head essentially blew off. And so that all happened in the room with my dad at nine years old. And so him and my grandmother were tried for the murder.

They were both acquitted. I had a very interesting talk with him on his deathbed about that moment, which I think I'll leave that between me and my father. You know, that led to a lot of, like, you know, he had split personality and, you know, schizophrenia runs really heavy in that side of the family. who has the stamina to endure all of these things that come with fame and criticism and hate because I fought back with all those traumas by becoming what I always wanted my dad to be, which was like tough and, you know, shake everything off and just fight anyone who, you know,

comes at you. I never understood why he was so closed, but dude, I'm tired and I'm a really shy, fucked up kid and internally and really broken. And I'm just now fixing myself and I don't have the energy to be the image that I was because I'm also kind of sick of being on an island alone where no one is outside of my fans you know my fans who really can read the music and read into the music sorry but as far as like public persona I'm really really sick of being what they think I am so I don't really know how I got

onto that from my dad's story but I don't know how you found that either that's a very like it was a very quite the piece of information to stumble upon? Um, I just did a little bit of research and I just, you know, I try to figure out what makes people tick and who they are. And, you know, when I first met you, I even told Jay, I was like, this is a sweet boy that just has a wallet, something hurt him. And I just wanted to kind of, you know, and I'm sorry if I interfered or anything like that with, with your process process that's going on but I just kind of wanted to figure out like you know where is this hurt coming from and you know I just I like to just go deep and figure out you know yeah I was the truth and I don't run from the truth you know my father was on trial

for a murder at nine years old like I that I watched every day. And you know, my mom, who's, who's such a sweet woman who I was, was molded to be so mad at. Molded by your dad?

Yes. Okay. When did she leave? nine okay so both my dad and i had interesting nine or nine or ten years i think it was nine or ten and it wasn't and it wasn't leave also i like i i i mean she left but also my father was hard to deal with dude was gnarly you know like yeah super gnarly when was your dad's birthday what sign was he december 30th capricorn and uh so i you know he would like the only word i didn't hear the word mom during my whole teenage years all i heard was whore and my mom is like the sweetest woman ever and she's a scientist and she's so smart and she's and and you know she's beautiful and she you know i i really i really missed her and regret missing all those years because of who I was you know those years are really important you know people people shape you

no matter how much you try to be your own absolutely um so she helped me you know to realize that that all those things that happened especially just like that like you can isolate just that i mean there's a lot of shit with my family you know like my dad lost his his brother my dad has a twin they were triplets the triplet died at birth uh and if you just isolate the you know that dad after that, like I said, every loud noise he would react. But he became, have you ever seen American Psycho? I haven't seen it. Well, Christian Bale's character.

Oh, yes. I'm so sorry. Everything that he does is black or white. There's no gray area. Every piece of clothing is folded perfectly it's ironed i feel like he had a little bit of autism the the he would shave every morning there was there was his isms like were so definitive and that's how my father was like every piece of clothing was like this he was obsessed with suspenders uh and so you know i was the same thing like did i one there was so many things that i did wrong that my dad would always like put in check but

i remember what every time i held my pen like this boom that's lazy you hold your pencil you hold your pen like this and it's just everything was that like i remember when the first time i got arrested when we got out he sat us down and it was the bible you know like it's just yeah like everything was very there was no oh yeah you can do it your way like what's what's your things that you want to do right it sounded like he might have had a little bit like severe OCD also there's a song that you say my heart was broke like my ribs as a kid when me and my father fought is that a true story like oh yeah yeah. Like, did your dad break your ribs? Yeah, well, and vice versa.

It was more so his ribs than my ribs. Both of us got fucked up. I remember that specific fight was in our kitchen in Cleveland. And we were uber twinning because both of us has just big ass black and purple right here so you guys were just in your living room just kitchen going to kitchen going at it yeah that was pretty common though and i was a really i acted out a lot like once i got to the point where i could fight back i was just on it you know but but yeah and I was angry and I also my dream was so it was so potent like nothing could stop my dream I was going to be

a rapper I was going to be a performer like there was no there was no manifested curfew for me and any punishment I had to take I would take it um yeah I mean I I wouldn't me I'll never forget when me slim and dub we came to my house one day and uh all of the furniture was gone and my dad was just sitting on the floor and he was like going to Africa my dad just did and I saw and I didn't see him till i was till i was 26 and i had already you know kind of achieved the dream and uh i just remember how old were you uh i think i was he had he had met my daughter once before he left so it was i was probably 19 because she was you know i was having the baby when i was 18 and i was like dad i'm having a kid and that was another thing where

he was like there's no fucking way there's absolutely no way you're having and he was you know disappointed because i was working at fast food and he was like you know why the fuck didn't you become a collegiate scholar. Your mom, so just circling back to that real quick, just to clarify, so when she left. Just to clarify, my cat is shitting over there, so. Nice. If you guys. Catch the downwind.

Catch any downwind that is. Little air biscuits, we're good. That's, and that's my, that's my trouble child. I think you got it. Yeah, that one's tickets so circling back to mom just to clarify when she left home you chose not to be a part of her life or did she just go no contact with you well you know another thing that kind of came with her and I reconnecting was just realizing that my dad was keeping me from her for years to hurt her yeah yeah and uh

yeah I mean I you know I had had all those frustrations like why the fuck would you never call why would you never show up I was in all these things came out like I was literally in your front yard and got the cops called on me. You know, every time I called, he would answer the phone and you know, go off. And so I, that was, that was a manipulative parent move. Where again, it's, it's really funny. I was at a Blink 182 show the other night

and they're about to do Stay Together for the kids, which is like, it's one is like, it's probably my favorite Blink song and it's a song about a broken home and he was like, if anybody comes from a broken home, raise your cell phone lights. So all these cell phone lights go up and he's like, I just want you to know that it's all your fault. It's really funny because I was a prime example of that where it was

like I was kind of the tool of manipulation between the whole thing where but it's never your fault I understand but I have to laugh at it at this point and honestly it really it I kind of was okay kind of there there there's a quote i heard today that i actually absolutely fell in love with and it said um sometimes you're older than your elders on an energy level your parents might be younger than you spiritually well that is me and my daughter because my daughter is a wise oak tree i have that in my notes and we're gonna so we're gonna talk about her too we can move on to that um let's talk about well i would like to say for the record i i love my mom dearly and i and i misrepresented her a lot early in my career and not misrepresented in the sense of not speaking truth i was speaking my truth but i didn't give the masses a chance to understand

her truth and i didn't i wasn't in masses a chance to understand her truth and I didn't, I wasn't in contact with her to understand her truth. And there was plenty of things that I was mad at her about because it was like, your fight has to be stronger. Like you gotta get to me. You know, you gotta Liam Neeson this shit. Come fucking find me no matter what it takes and you know because I was stuck in that situation you know my the house I was even

living in with my aunt and her husband who was a giant piece of shit I I shouldn't have been in that place. Can we touch on your aunt too? She was somebody who was very dear to you. That was my dog for life. Was it mother's or father's side? That was my dad's older sister. Take me on that journey with you guys' relationship. Take me on that journey with you guys' relationship.

She was like the biggest supporter of any dream I had. I wanted to be a Jedi so bad. And, you know, she bought me this hockey stick so that I could take the end of the little hitting part off so I could have like a staff like a lightsaber and i would just always be in the yard and just be like you know i would attach a carabiner to a rope to a tree and i would put a bandana over my eyes like when they train and the lasers come with them and they can just feel yeah so i would always like hit the carabiner in the front yard and she would any dream i had she would be like hell yeah you're to be a Jedi. Like, what can I do to support it? And when I wanted to be a battle rapper, you know, I would always make her watch videos with me on BET and MTV.

And she was like, well, we got to, you know, we got to get you looking like that. So she took me and she got me my first, like, you know, hip hop outfit, which in hindsight, I looked so fucking stupid oh no what was it now you gotta tell me what it was just like some like anichi denim shorts that were just like down to like my shins with like with these stitches in them so it was different colored denim on it matching denim whatever but it's crazy because when i wore that to school, everyone all of a sudden, it was like right at the end of the year when all the yearbooks, you sign everyone's yearbook.

And the first, on my sixth grade yearbook, it's so cool because no one signed it because I had no friends except for my one boy who's locked up and who's still my friend. But seventh grade, man, when I pulled up in that denim thing, everyone wanted to sign my yearbook.

And I was battle rapping too, so everyone was like, hell yeah. You like they were they were fucking with my heart they could see i was they could see i was vicious and i had good rhymes as a child that's all you need is one person in your corner just telling you you can be whatever the fuck you want to be totally and then i mean she carried that mentality so heavy into my career because she worked at target and um dude i we would there was a strip club across the street called shotgun willies and it was in the parking lot of this target and um one of my proudest moments was pulling the tour bus up to target oh to pick her up but she had a she had these glasses on and i was like i'm

barbara like you know take your glasses off like i want you know connect with me or whatever and she wouldn't take them off and i was like i was like what's wrong and you know she finally took her glass off she had a black eye oh no my uncle had fucked her up. And you know, one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't just go kill that motherfucker right there. You know? And like, that was obviously in the plans, but everybody was like, dude, you have so much going for you. You know, like, don't, don't make this decision.

But that was my heart. You know, like I, I couldn't take that anyone did that to her, you know, so especially him. But anyway, cut to a couple years later. You know, we're at this at Shotgun Willie's. And all the dancers are coming up to me, and they're like, yo, we love your aunt. Does she work at Target? And I was like, yeah.

She was like, yeah. They were like, yeah, anytime we go over there to buy anything, she always has MGK CDs next to her register. And if you look young, or you buy anything that resembles you might listen to me, she'd be like, have you guys heard of MGK? That's my nephew, or you buy anything that resembles like you might listen to me, she'd be like, Have you guys heard of MGK? That's my nephew, you should buy the CD or like if I was on the cover of a magazine, like inked magazine or something like that, she'd be like,

you know, if someone's buying like a, I don't know, a cool t shirt or another CD or something, she'd be like, Dude, you should you should buy my nephew's magazine magazine cover and so she was obsessed with with me and I was like a really really inspiring person in my life and you know watching her go through cancer and then beating that and she was always really resilient but she she and my father they both both died from liver cirrhosis. They drank themselves to death. That was a hard one to bite, especially because the last phone call that I had, I cut her off. I was in a really bad mood. I was in Germany about to do this festival called Splash Festival.

She would always call me, and it was one of those conversations where i was like she honestly she was probably just giving me love and i'm really uncomfortable with love right and if i if i'm if i'm at that point in my life if i was getting any of it i got i got really like oh just and i just hung up the phone and that was the last time i spoke to her and he called me and told me she had passed right before i went on stage she knows you love her though she can hear you talking about her at any time time i spoke to her and he called me and told me she had passed right before i went on stage she knows you love her though she can hear you talking about her at any time yeah that that's one where man i always just wish she would come to me in my dreams or something like i never got closure with that and she i i did ask that the spirits don't take her to the next life yet like i i i i really want her to be a spirit guide for me in this lifetime like i want her to

stay watching over me and i feel like it's i feel like it's happened you know like i've had a really big turnaround in the past couple years spiritually and uh even just with career you know yeah absolutely i bet and i guarantee that's her hand in that for sure yeah is it do i do i am i like look is it what am i supposed to do with my eyes you're doing great don't don't overthink it you're crushing it um so you started battle rapping in seventh grade seventh grade maybe sixth grade seventh grade though was that your outlet because you were such an introverted child and just such a, you know, had such a crazy home life and abusive home life. Was that your outlet to just go and be, you know, because whenever I envision battle rappers, I envision like the aggression and just, you know, snipering people verbally. Yeah, I desperately needed something to fit in.

You know, I was an okay skater. I was an okay fighter. Fighting was really big growing up, you know, like all these kind of different outlets of kind of like alpha actions were the highlight of what seemed like people were accepting you know like a lot of my friends weren't gang so I wanted to you know be a gang member a lot of but what I was obsessed with was music. I loved, I just, I loved music. That was who was always talking to me was my headphones. And so I-

Who were your influences back then? DMX was huge for me. Tupac was huge for me. Yeah, Tupac. The Kanye and 50 albums and Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit. And that era of albums was so, it had all the angst I needed, it was saying all the stories of a runaway,

fuck up, broken home youth. And yeah, my first battle rap, I'll never forget. I don't remember any of the lines that I said, but I do remember I looked up, it was a dude that was taller than me. And the last line I was like, bitch, get your tall ass down and kiss my feet. And it rhymed with whatever I'd said before.

And everyone was just like, ah, and lost their mind. And it was so opposite of how I was at home. Cause at home I was essentially bullied to just be like a piece of furniture in the corner you know what I mean like I didn't really have a voice at all so I had to find a way to have a voice and battle rap gave me my your alter ego for sure yeah for sure and then I probably got lost in that because I just started to just that was the person who was accepted so I just became that person when was the last time you needed to go to a doctor but you pushed it off made the excuse of I'm too busy it'll heal on

its own I don't need help I think we've all been there booking a doctor appointment can just feel so daunting but thanks to ZocDoc there's no reason to delay they make it so easy to find and book a doctor who's right for you ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in-network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. We're talking about booking in-network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors across every specialty from mental health to dental health,

primary care to urgent care and more. I don't know about you guys, but when I'm sick, the last thing I wanna do is get dressed, get in my car and drive to a doctor. If I can do it from the comfort of my own home, which is what I do, you bet your buttons I'm going to do it. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to ZocDoc.com slash bunny to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today.

That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash bunny. B-U-N-N-I-E. ZocDoc.com slash bunny. It's a new year. New you. New business. Okay? Don't put it off another year. I want you to manifest, put action behind it, and thrive, baby. The best time to start your new business is this year right now. Shopify makes it simple to create your brand open for business and get your first sale their powerful social media tools let you connect all your channels and create shoppable posts and help you sell everywhere people scroll shopify

makes it easy to manage your growing business they help with the details like shipping taxes and payments from one single dashboard and help you focus on the important stuff, like growing your business. With Shopify, your first sale is closer than you think. Start today, baby. Established in 2025 has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash bunny, B-U-N-N-I-E, all lowercase.

Go to shopify.com slash bunny to start selling with Shopify today to Shopify.com slash bunny to start selling with Shopify today. Shopify.com slash bunny. I 100% resonate with that because I was abused by my stepmother growing up. And so she was the bully at home and I became the bully outside of the house. It's because you just feel like you have to put on this, this facade so that nobody can hurt you. Cause you already get hurt so much inside your house that when you leave the house and nobody's going to fucking hurt you because you already get hurt so much inside your house

that when you leave the house nobody's gonna fucking hurt you because you control that totally so battle rapping became your love and then you know later on down the line you ended up having a baby when you were about 18 correct yep can we talk about casey yeah yeah i'd love to let's talk about her you light up whenever you talk about her yeah and i love that and i noticed in a lot of her interviews um you know she does seem like such an old soul i'm telling you even hearing you on the phone with her last night it was like you were reporting to your mom like you like even your demeanor and everything kind of changed.

Yeah. Well, my life changed. I'll never forget the first breath she took. She came out and she wasn't breathing. And then the doctor, I think, like tapped her chest or something like that. And she did the like. And I just remember everything was jokes and me trying to make her mother feel i was trying to make her mother laugh while she was having which was just going

so poorly like it was so bad it was i didn't know what to do i should have been calming but i was just trying to make jokes she was like shut the fuck up she's like i'm shitting a kid out here yeah and uh man when she took that first breath dude every tears like niagara fall started coming and i fell in love and that was really the first person i ever you know loved like they actually gave you that feeling of love besides your aunt you said that you were number 22 which i'm i was born on the 22nd myself were you really january 22nd and we are we are rule breakers and generational curse breakers right and i feel like it stops with you with the lineage that your family has with the men yeah and i see what a

father you are to casey and you know can you appreciate that you've actually broken that curse with your family uh I don't know I gotta finish this life first and do a review of my soul and kind of see if I made the right decisions or not and I feel like one of my favorite quotes which my friend my son gave me was me was, I thank God that I have the ability to punish myself today so that I can forgive myself tomorrow. So, you know, for the mistakes that I've made, I'm grateful that I also have the choice to forgive myself. Absolutely. have the choice to forgive myself absolutely you know the after because i think a lot of us live with like oh man i messed up like i i'm just stuck being that mistake and it's it's really hard with the internet too just constantly wants to make you be that mistake also and i just want everyone to feel comfortable to know that

you know god or the universe or or or energy period has given you the ability to forgive yourself like that's a choice that you have to make and just like you have the choice to get in your car and drive somewhere or get out of bed and do something like you have you have that ability to forgive yourself which is really important otherwise those things are just gonna grow inside of you and eat you alive and that's i think a lot of i honestly i i truly believe that you know things like cancer or disease in some cases come from. Trauma. And secrets that you've withheld that you can't forgive yourself for.

Secrets keep you sick. Yes. Absolutely. So it's really important to. Get it out. Yes. And accept and forgive. Do you think you'll ever be able to give yourself your flowers while you are alive though for for being the father that you are like you may not feel like you're perfect and i don't think

anybody's a perfect parent but coming from what you grew up in to who you are now and the father that you are to casey would you can you ever just look at yourself and be like yeah i did do that yeah but I I could always you know I could be a better father so I just I don't know I mean I hope I hope that I'll always be someone that she can depend on and lean on and love i i guess i'm just so scared because i know how my relationship with my parents was and you know i was so mad at my dad up until the last moments of his life so i just i almost uh i don't know and i'm i i'm like i'm so in love with her that i'm scared you know you don't ever want to disappoint. It's not for me to give myself any flowers.

That's for her to decide if I did a good job or not. I understand that. Take me on this journey where you're battle rapping. You just had a baby. I think you were at um south by southwest and austin i i mean the the story that was kind of built was that but essentially um we had did i think a southwest even south by southwest prior to that maybe even another one before that i think everyone had kind of discovered me at the same time label wise because there was a big bidding war and um yeah i mean essentially we had to you know choose a label to go with. But it wasn't South by Southwest.

It was really the mixtape circuit. Like we were, the one thing that I always loved that we did was we would catch everyone coming out of school and we would hand them our mixtape. And so all the seniors who would graduate, you know, go off to college in all these different parts of the country. And they take a piece of home with them with our with our mixtape. And they're like, yeah, but back home, we got this kid like you got to check him out.

And so like the word really started to spread. And that was when mixtape era was, you know, it was really important. And blog era was really important. Me and Mac and Wiz and Big Sean's and Kendrick's and ASAP's, all these mixtape kids were just kind of just ground zero handing out CDs. So I still meet people who are like, yo, I remember you gave me this in whatever year. And Slim was a huge part of that i mean i remember i saved up so much just to buy my own like cd burner and we would print all the cds put the labels on we shared a one-bedroom apartment together and uh we would

just go out and hand them out and there was this one really funny memory where we went and gathered up all these coins like we saved like i don't know 300 400 dollars worth of coins oh i remember that the vending machine that you would take it tells you like or you do like the big water bottle yeah yeah and then we bought a juno keyboard with that kids now will never know they'll never know they'll never know it's all right but you got a keyboard yeah it's crazy yeah so we got a juno and we made all our beats with that and uh yeah i don't know i also was just like dude i would just rap for every single person that would listen that was kind of i worked at an airbrush shop and i was kind of what i was like uh cleveland famous for was just like oh that's the white boy from the airbrush shop who always raps for everybody or i

would go in front of the mall because the mall was that is is the big skyscraper in downtown cleveland it's called tower city i'll go in front of there that's like the the meeting points point between east side and west side on um where the trains come and I would just rap for everybody out front or battle rap whoever the you know the Illuminati talks and all that stuff that that come towards me from people I just it's it I explain it best in the end of that El Pistolero song when I say, I don't worship the devil. That's just what they say when you get on this level. Literally.

They accuse Jay and I of being Illuminati. I'm like, look, homie, this is what hard work is. Hard work means that something comes from it. And if you look at my journey i've been pushing and pushing and pushing and you know by all means i would have loved a so i would have loved a button pusher to be like we're gonna make him huge yeah you know what i mean like they would have saved me a lot of stress and a lot of friends lost and a lot of you know a lot of years you know it's odd to be

on at 19 and not experience your biggest success until you're 30 and and that was one thing that jelly I love that speech when he was like don't ever when he won best new artist yeah and it took me 38 years that speech when he was like, don't ever, when he won Best New Artist. Yeah. And, you know. It took me 38 years to get here. Yeah, for sure. And don't ever let age be a factor in. 2 Chainz didn't hit it off until he was like 40, right? Dude, he was like 36 or something like that when it happened.

And I hate that the expression grow up. Like I posted, you know, the fangs or something like that the other day and you see one comment out of the 5,000 that you just zoom in on and it's like, something about like grow up or you know, you're too old to be doing this or whatever it is which is so ironic because we're all still so young but to me that's just a sign of you being scared to ever unleash your creativity i couldn't imagine if tim burton had to come up with nightmare before christmas before he hit 20 years old. Yeah, absolutely.

Because we wouldn't have these things. Like there is no age on art. There is no age on fun. I love, I was just reading this book earlier. Let me see if. Yeah. Join with all those who experiment, take risks, fall, get hurt, and then take more risks. Stay away from those who affirm truths, who criticize those who do not think like them,

people who have never once taken a step unless they were sure that they would be respected for doing so, and who prefer certainties to doubts. I love that. I don't ever want to step and know that the ground is going to hold me. The best part of life are these risks that I take. And the worst thing i could ever imagine being is someone who is caged in because others live in a cage one of my favorite quotes is from oscar wilde and it's you will always be fond of me for i represent to you the sins you never had the courage to commit i'm telling you what is growing up literally so it's so odd you gotta always just be in tune with your inner child

and i think a thousand percent the the second that your light is fueled by gasoline instead of natural wood means that it's forced like this is all things that burn inside of me naturally why would you want to you know why would you want a synthetic result instead of something that is organic i think it's the world is so programmed and people just take everything so literal now and it's just like there's a time limit on everything and really people don't realize that time is like the most precious commodity and something that you'll never get back and it's like why don't you want to do what you love with that time instead of what the world's telling you to do also why if someone had their childhood robbed would you not want to allow them that back that's like expecting i gave me goosebumps if helen keller got her hearing and her eyesight back at 36 being like whoa whoa why are you on a

why are you on a why are you on a seesaw right that's like, well, I never got to experience this. I want to experience all the joys of life. So to me, let me experience all these joys. I didn't have 20. In my 20s, I was on drugs. I don't remember fucking any happy moments. I don't remember any of the, you know, attaining the shows that, you know, finally sold out. I don't remember any of the you know attaining these the shows that you know finally sold out I don't remember those things so let me enjoy I didn't get to I was so so tight and and determined

to you know overcompensate for the traumas that I had to show that I was good enough that I didn't get the chance to creatively express myself maybe with things like that make me happy. I was trying to, you know, satisfy others. Mask also mask all the pain that you went through. When did your drug abuse start? all the pain that you went through. When did your drug abuse start? Or drug experimentation? If saving more and spending less is one of your top goals for 2025, why are you still paying insane amounts of money

every month for your wireless? Switching to Mint Mobile is the easiest way to save this year. As the first company to sell premium wireless service online only, Mint Mobile lets you maximize your savings with plans starting at $15 a month when you purchase a three-month plan. Listen, guys, I know if you're anything like me, I love to save a doll hair, all right? So Mint Mobile, $15 a month when you purchase a three-month plan. How can you go wrong with that? Say bye-bye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw-dropping monthly bills, and unexpected overages. All plans

come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com slash bunny, B-U-N-N-I-E. That's mintmobile.com slash bunny. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash bunny.

$45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Probably, I mean, 11 was the first time that I did ecstasy with my one friend who lived on the same street because his older sister dated a rave DJ. Oh my goodness, 11 years old yeah but it

was it was it was funny they like told us how to do you know they told us how to do it they gave us a little um pacifiers because your teeth grind that's not you're 11 yeah yeah but then you know then it's not like it you know it's not like it continued daily it was it took breaks and i was um more focused on music than i than i was being a burnout but then in my 20s i went the fuck off for sure made up for lost time definitely what was your drug of choice started started with weed and alcohol then i i really loved snorting by vans because the the work ethic that came with that just being able to like lock in on something and being like oh my god i just wrote six songs in two hours you know like are you diagnosed add

oh for by vans and stuff like that? Hell no. I don't know what I know. Well, just because they work so good on you. Because I know when I take Adderall, it makes me feel like I am cracked out and I have the opposite effect than getting anything done. Yeah. I also think maybe when I was, yeah, I don't know. Who knows?

Yeah. Loved, loved like hydrocodone. Oh yeah. I love a good Lord Irv. Loved Percocet. That was my, my dad loved Percocet too. Percocet and red wine.

Like my dad's twin told me that. Was your dad an addict also? Yeah, I didn't, I, that was actually how he really connected to my music was he went to rehab, uh, when he came back from africa

and he met someone with an mgk tattoo and that guy whoever that was shout out to you my boy because you really opened up a big door for me and my dad's relationship because i guess the kid was like dude you don't know what your kid like means to people you don't know what this like this this music does for for us and so my dad really kind of had a different respect for me um after that rehab stint and like like i said you know he the last that what's up boy the the last thing that we did which you know he was too far gone anyway so i wasn't even like i was trying to be the you know rule enforcer but he was like dude can you just sneak me in some whiskey because he was in hospice and obviously

you can't drink or do anything and at this point you know his his feet had already been amputated oh my goodness that was you know one of the hardest things in my life was putting on his socks over his, whatever was left of his feet or whatever. And exactly, exactly. And yeah, I went and got the best bottle of bourbon I could find and we drank and then he peaced out. Do you feel like that helped kind of put you into more of a pop culture moment, quote unquote, and, you know, Hotel Diablo was kind of under the spotlight? Oh, I actually feel like Hotel Diablo was severely underappreciated.

Really? For sure. I think until later, you know, it got appreciated as probably my best body of work as a rap album. It got 1.3 billion streams, but you felt like the media kind of wrote you off, right? I'm for the people, you know. I'm a man of the people. So I really only care what the people think. The whole like yearning for critic approval left me many years ago.

That's why I mean, if you think that I, for one second thought that me making a pop punk album was gonna satisfy anybody other than what i wanted to do it has to be you know like i i clearly knew that it was gonna rupture the structured system of like you're supposed to do this and you're you know labeled as this so this is what you are i'm i'm wearing the shirt of a boundary breaker does this so this is what you are i'm i'm wearing the shirt of a boundary breaker i look up to those who who break the system and make people think that's what art is supposed to do so uh i also struggle with the like did that bring spotlight because i had been facially and musically famous for eight years before that.

There wasn't a street that I could walk on from here to Australia to Germany to anywhere where people weren't like, oh, shit, that's Machine Gun Kelly. narrative really tries to force something that you know in time as long as I continue to run my own race people will look back on and it won't even be a I think you've proven yourself yeah so um 1.3 billion streams is nothing to go off at I mean that's I think that's the people telling you that they're consuming you. For sure. They're loving you. And I'm the opposite of Wizard of Oz. I'm outside constantly making sure that my feet are touching ground and that I'm connecting with the people that I'm speaking for. Absolutely.

And I think that's why your fans love you and the people in your life love you because you are such a strong force to be reckoned with. For sure. So diving back into your album with Hotel Diablo, it was bittersweet. You know, we talked about the 1.3 billion streams and stuff like that,

but you did also touch on the fact that your father did die the same day that that came out. And you had said in an interview somewhere that a neighbor had told you some fucked up things that you couldn't get closure on yeah can we dive into that a little bit it was so eerie and so And so, really just wrong in my opinion because I was not able to, you know, speak to my father or my aunt about any of the things that were said about him. But, you know, one thing I know that he wanted, that he had asked me to do was to go into his safe which was in storage in Cleveland and uh so I did that and I was you know kind of where I got some psychological closure that you know he had a severe split personality disorder and uh you know i had had a just gnarly kind of rehab stints throughout my life that i never really

knew about so like when he would be like i'm gonna go on a job interview and it would be like a long time he was gone like i was kind of putting the pieces together like oh he was in rehab um the reason the reason i'm asking is because you had said that it sent you into such a spiral that you ended up putting a shotgun in your mouth well that i i guess i wouldn't necessarily talk about that because it's really hard to for things to get taken out of context i also think drugs are really mind-altering and like people should be really careful of what um it does to your brain chemistry because maybe that's not even necessarily you doing the actions, you know. Yeah, absolutely.

It's something else taking over your body. But you know what I can say is it made me so uncomfortable that I didn't even want to put my dad's ashes and my aunt's ashes in the same room as each other so yeah how do you move on from something like that how do you like because you're you're literally you're riding one wave where you don't feel you had said that you don't feel like Hotel Diablo got you know what it deserved but on the other hand you you know the streams don't lie and then you're dealing with the situation with your dad and drug use and mental health like where where does a a shining light come in and like where do where do you how do you navigate through such a dark time like that of highs and lows?

My specific situation was really fortunate because of the group of friends that I have. And they've been the same group of friends that I've had since I came in. and vulnerable and like getting speaking things um to them and receiving really grounded advice and comfort and loyalty from people that i know would never turn their backs on me no matter what and i've tested that to the max you know where if they were going to leave then they would have left a long time ago yeah um anyone that gets close to me i push them away to see if they stay for sure that's all a test it's not because i want them to go anywhere absolutely i'm never i was watching this video my mom sent me of me as a kid where i was like i had a really funny lisp when i was a kid i had to get my pharyngeal cut because my tongue wouldn't go past my teeth so i talked like this and like it was really funny

and like i couldn't say my r's very well so i was walking around and i was like my mom was filming me and i was like i'm hunting bales and she was like uh okay well like where are you gonna go and i was like i'm gonna go i'm gonna go over there and i'm gonna hunt i'm gonna hunt bales and i started walking and i'm just like waiting for her to like come with me. And I'm just like, come with me. And like that, that really like is a testament. Well, it's like a microcosm of who I really am, where I, I, I really don't want to be alone. Like I don't ever want, I don't ever want to be alone like i don't ever want i don't ever want to be alone you know like i love my friends so much and i love really hard uh but i'm not good at showing it i show it by being an asshole or you know trying to show, see, I knew you would leave me.

And- Kind of like a form of self-sabotage. Oh, dude, self-sabotage king right here. Yeah. And it also got, you know, it's funny, COVID helped me stop cocaine. Like cocaine was, you asked me what my favorite drug, what my drug of choice was

cocaine was the shit to me right it gave me the like me and jelly talk about that all the time where i'm i'm so socially awkward but i would do that before i went somewhere and i would leave and just be like i just fucking killed that shit in there like everyone loves me dude like i was brought you out of yourself talking to everybody and you know just like this false sense of you know superman syndrome or just like you know i i whatever and so i you know it's funny because covid really helped that because obviously everyone thought it was a fucking zombie apocalypse so none of the dealers would leave their house yeah exactly so you had no choice but to just like yeah all right like you know i gotta find something else um when did megan enter the picture right i was just that was that was right there where i was leading into how powerful the heart is because you can play with every other sense that you have in your body but if your heart isn't there uh it's like it's like this it's like this example of

you know being an archer and you can be so technically skilled and all of these your precision could be perfect right and all that stuff but if you switch to an uncomfortable place like a shaky bridge if you're not shooting from your soul then all that precision all the technicalities that you've mastered like nothing beats a shot from the soul right like that anybody that's why that's why i never care when people give me shit about guitar playing i don't care how technically good you are like every time i i play my guitar i'm playing it from my heart so whatever i'm playing is how i felt that day and you know the people who are like why do i why why am i not you know on on his level of fame or other things like that i all i've done is just shoot shots from my soul so if there's nothing to deny that there's people that will always resonate and you know my arrows will hit their heart and

and you know my arrows will hit their heart and that woman struck a bullseye and when I felt that sense light up everything else went away and I learned to accept living that was like it i'm forever grateful to god and indebted to the destiny lines that wove me into that wove me and her together because that was something where you know when I saw her eyes for the first time it was like I had a telescope to every secret in the universe and I think what followed that really proved what moving with love does because you know my the album that I made after that was just take us to my downfall went to a level I had never experienced and you know I started to be able to feel my body in different ways my mind like the frequency of my mind

and the information that started coming into it and the way that I was able to start processing my own you know she was a when you have a twin flame relationship you're essentially looking at a mirror at all of the things that you fucking

have ran away from your whole life. And, you know, it's not like this grand waltz of love and gentility. It's really, really, really dark at first. And it's toxic because you're staring it's you're essentially do you watch harry potter i don't but they do there was a remember that mirror where he could look in and he could see his parents and all that so it's like it's like looking at that but instead you're seeing all of the things that you've ran away from this whole time and all the things that those drugs have numbed and the music and successes have numbed

and you're forced to either look away and lose or face and embrace. face and embrace and that is the endless waltz that we are constantly in with each other and so I think the reason that she and I have stepped away from publicizing anything in our relationship just down to photos of us having fun together or things like that is because we're both

really intuitive people and so we feel the millions of we feel the millions of hate that comes at you wants to tear down beautiful things always but you guys standing together will never allow that because you guys are way stronger than any hate that you guys could ever receive well i mean i i won't lie and say that you know the evil eye didn't really, really take a toll on what, you know, we thought was a beautiful thing that we could maybe inspire people to, not mimic, but just inspire people to love, right? Like that, not love us, but just inspire the action of love because I would be wrong in saying

that we don't all, you know, kind of look at what we see on TV or on our phones and, you know, want to mimic or we think that, you know, I grew up, like I said, the main word that was in my house from my father about my mom was whore. And the things that I would see on TV from the movies

and the music I was listening to was not about monogamy and was not about love. It was about the complete opposite. And so me and her being you also have a huge mother wound too for sure and and and she clearly uh you know megan was a a big uh test for me in that because you're confronting all of your mother wounds when you find the person that you love and that uh relationship or that that idea that we had or where we were like you know let's let's change what's in mainstream media about relationships like let's let's show love you know kind of felt like

it backfired because it's it's cute at first and then people get sick of seeing you happy and i you know i'm actually fortunate because i feel like a lot of the exes that i have and um you know, the women that I've met in my life, and they've all kind of had an empathy for seeing that, oh, man, it's just a broken kid, man. Like, you know, he'll figure it out one day. I've been supported in that for a long time and i really appreciate all those people um that i've met on my journey for being so kind to me and understanding that i was just you know figuring myself out but um the hate that came with the relationship was

you know but don't let them win no i know but but now we But don't let them win. No, I know, but now we just don't let it be anybody's business, right? Yeah, absolutely. Because what they don't know, they can't. They don't know if they're winning or losing. Right, for sure. All they need to know is that you guys love each other and you guys are in it to win it.

I think. Go ahead. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I'm done. No, I love hearing you talk it's like poetry so i could i just feel like i'm a really boring talker right now it's actually really beautiful i i talk at like a two mile per hour pace and i don't necessarily no i think i'm better at writing the music and talking than i am actually conversational talk no i think people at home are actually probably going to fall in love with you because just

hearing you talk is so beautiful and it's very poetic. I just have one question though. Like, can we just focus on the fact that Megan had way more swagger than you when you guys met? Because you better at a party and she said you smell like weed and you looked at her and you said, I am weed. And then you guys saw each other, what, like a year later? And you walked into her trailer and, you know, she's... No, I sat outside my trailer. Yeah. Praying to God that she would look over when she got out of her car to walk into her trailer

and maybe have like a tiny inkling to be like come over here and it worked yeah yeah that except yeah the first time I thought that was the second day of work the first day of work I was so awkward and just stared at the ground the whole time and she just asked me questions and she has really pretty feet so that was like she had she was shit but didn't you walk at the feet so that was like she and she was she had but didn't you walk at the ground like i was like i don't know i was just i was super awkward didn't know anything what i didn't know what to say she's asked me a bunch of questions and asked me when my birthday was and things like that um didn't you walk in and she said um how are you and you said i'm broken

and she said well let's find you or i'm lost and she said let's find you I'm like go fucking Megan go like that was that's hot that she did that yeah agreed so what was it like making you know on the set of this movie what was it like doing your first scene with her did you just know from the get-go that you guys were going to be together? Oh, I was obsessed. Yeah. For sure. I was obsessed. And yeah, her conversations are so entertaining. She's so fun to listen to. She has so much to say and she's so intelligent.

And she's, you know, she's really deep and she's dead sober. And, you know. Are there things you didn't think were possible in a woman yeah i grew up with a very skewed you know outlook and like i said like my my idols were kind of like my parents so i was operating in a frequency that wasn't mine so a lot of those years and you know things that i'm judged for i'm just like it's you know that's that's a young man operating uh in a frequency that is not aligned with who i really am and so it also kind of trips me out because you know our skin cells regenerate every seven years so I'm literally not the same person that I was seven years ago let alone the same person I was yesterday every day I'm constantly

evolving and growing but it's something really important to keep in mind dude because people you know if if they're down in the pig pen getting dirty they want you to be down there with them. Oh, absolutely. They don't look at the ones outside of it being stoked. They're like, fuck that, I'm trapped down here. I'm going to do anything I can to get you down here with me. Instead of being like, I'll do anything I can to get out of here and be there with you.

They love you when you're on their level. If you get any higher than that, they tear you down. It's like they build you up to tear you down yeah so it's a it's a very very toxic cycle to participate in and a lot of us are in it i was in it for so long um so gotta get out of it that requires strength and discipline and change you know going back to our quote about not, you know, not aligning with those who are scared to take the next step unless they're completely positive that the ground will not break beneath them. Yeah.

Moving on from Megan, let's talk about tickets to my downfall. That was pretty life-changing for you. And I don't think think look at you smile i love whenever you um own your accomplishments i think that's a good thing for you i'm just smiling i'm not like saying it was like stop it you could be like yeah i did that like you did so good i mean to do a genre switch i i've only seen a few people do it successfully that's you my husband and maybe a few other people and it is not easy because one you have to win over brand new fans and then your old fans get mad you know like you know because you've been there yeah what was it like dropping

that album were you absolutely petrified or did you know that it was going to be what it was oh dude i already felt completely alienated. I've been an outlier since birth. So I kind of just got back into that mentality of being a kid who wanted to be a Jedi. You know, or I did. I mean, when I was trying to be Super Saiyan, I cannot describe to you how awkward i must have looked because i would be in my front yard like really channeling to fully trying to get my chi to explode off of me and kamehameha anything so i i uh yeah tickets i did purely out of the the spirit of what I wanted to do.

I also did, I was a Warped Tour kid. The people that act like that was new for me, I don't know what to write, is bequeath. What does that word mean? Because I've been thinking. I bequeathed you. So like in a will, they would bequeath you property. Ah, okay, well I have been completely,

what's the word for like lost, like shocked? Insert synonym for shocked, but I have just been so confused at the narrative of me trying something new when like i've been a band since i started i've been flabbergasted that you have the nerve to even act like that is something new to me i've been a pop punk kid since i was just since you know like that that that like that, that, that, like the, I also was, I, the one thing that confused me so much was, you know, kind of when I came out with that, I was,

I knew I was relighting a flame for all of the peers that I had been friends with and grew up with and knowing that I now, now had a platform that could shine light on something that I loved and you know all of the people that you know I remember seeing you say you know something about motionless and white and you know your husband doing a song with with the falling in reverse and those are all guys I had I've toured with I've literally been on warped with those guys in 2011 2012 2010 like doing the Ernie Ball stage, doing the main stage, playing as a band, covering Blink songs, and just never really had the means or the discipline

to sit down and just make an actual record that sounded like the universe I was already a part of but I couldn't believe the lack of support from the guys that I was really kind of supporting by putting this album out and I really felt like we all missed an opportunity to make that scene pop again, pop in a way that felt like there was a ceiling. And I'm severely disappointed at the bands who didn't speak out or speak up for the movement that was happening

because it had nothing to do with my music. It had to do with the fact that there's a new generation of kids who are like holy shit like i want to play guitar yeah because bring seeing everyone before then and i don't mean everyone obviously the scene is always alive but i'm just saying in mainstream culture you know like the migos and chief keith and that was the that was the shit when all the kids were like oh shit I want to wear you know chains and hit cadences like that on 808s yeah and I was also kind of seeing instrumentation die in mainstream radio and award shows and all those things I was missing bands you know all of the bands that were happening

were bands that had been around for generations. And I was like, no, it's time for this new shit. And, you know, I even loved going to the Blink show recently and seeing Pierce the Veil open. I was like, oh, that's so sick. You know, like they deserve this new audience. And I just felt like there was a real lack of support from people that I watched sit side stage with me when I would perform a warp tour and who supported me when I was down right

Well, I who supported me when I was on at 1 p.m Or 2 p.m. And I wasn't a force to be reckoned with in their eyes like it was it was just something cool like oh shit You know we fuck with this dude but then uh you know we didn't form an alliance like I wish I wish we could have and i really felt like that was a missed opportunity and um you know all the youtubers the reactors and um you know people who had a platform who like joined the train of this is cool to shit on for likes or you know scared to embrace what's uncomfortable. Not cool. I think it's way bolder to rock with something

that is gonna give, that's gonna make other people look at you like, why are you down with that? Because I experienced that as a kid when I would be like, I love Blink-182. And everyone was like, no man, that's's not punk anti-flags punk no effects is punk and you're damn right but blink makes great music and they're also punk as fuck and just because they're on mtv doesn't mean that they're soft or that their guess so you know with with my shit i think um i'm very happy and honored

to anyone who listened to that album and embraced it and is an mgk fan because i really think that you're the outliers and i really think that it makes you in hindsight in 10 years from now it's going to make you feel proud that you are on this side of that movement as opposed to that side because my my wave doesn't crash that album did great though let me look at the streams that album did great it got like eighty one point one million streams is that correct no no no that's not correct when you google it that's what that's what it says it says eighty one.1 million streams.

Oh, on Spotify, it's, I think, 3 billion. 3 billion? On Spotify alone, yeah. Anyway, that's still a ton of fucking streams. Anybody that has anything bad to say about it is just literally promoting your album so people will listen to it at this point. That's true.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic in my outlook. No, no, no, I'm just saying, even if they're trying to hate on you,'s like fuck those people dude because they're gonna make people curious and that's you know part of the streams that you're having yeah yeah yeah yeah i you know i i don't do i don't really do interviews ever so i guess i don't really get to say my side of things so i think i was more so not trying to point out any negative i was just trying to fact check things because it's time for um everything you said was fine it's hard it's hard for me to watch narratives be be carried by falsified facts just like the thing with like oh

he switched genres after this it's like no it's impossible there was a rap album that followed that which was also my most successful rap album there was you know a pop punk album that came which was naturally leading up to that because even on my first album the first track featured avenge sevenfold which is a very goaded yeah band and and shadows yeah and like those are these like this this is all you know on hotel diablo i left the last track being i think i'm okay letting people know that the next era is is coming and it came but That's what she said. But even if you did, just say, say that you didn't have all that background and you didn't have that track record,

even if you did come in and say, hey, you know what, I wanna do rock, I'm gonna pick up a guitar, I'm gonna learn how to fucking play. Why is that not okay? Why? It's so okay. Exactly.

Do whatever the fuck you want, literally. Nothing matters, dude. Like as a society, nothing matters, I promise you. We have to do better you have to just do whatever makes you feel happy if you want to rap one day you want to sing country and do the fucking polka look at me watch what happens i just rapped last week and then lonely road dropped

that's a country rock record yeah we're bringing mgk over to country guys it's always a possibility i love i love the i love i listen your country chords your cover you just did of luke i'm not luke bryan sorry sorry zach of zach bryan's um son to me yeah was beautiful thank you and you're the delivery your voice everything was amazing thank you that song really spoke to me and so i was really happy i did that i was i was so flattered i saw a tweet someone pulled the tweet up from zach in 2012 where he was like it's an mgk day oh i was like sick the universe is cool you call megan the sun to you don't you does that have any sort of she has so many nicknames yeah Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love Maki. I call her Maki.

She calls me Buddha. Why does she call you Buddha? And why do you call her Maki? Good question. I don't know why she calls me Buddha. Because I'm not essentially very Buddha-like. Maybe. I can start now.

Hold up. There you go. You need a belly though, too. You got to get that belly going. There you go. I can start now. Hold up. There you go. You need a belly though too. You got to get that belly going. There you go. I can push out. She calls you Lambie too, right? Lambie.

Yeah. Lambie. She said you had to earn that back though in an interview. Yeah. Why'd you have to earn it back? What'd you do? I think Lambie is the very vulnerable, softer side. Oh.

I don't know. Is it is a lamb a sheep yes uh yes it's a baby sheep correct a lamb is a baby sheep we all don't know i don't know it's all we know is that it's it's it's cute it's cute and soft yeah so i'm assuming that i had something to do with that unless i look like a lamb but i think i look more like i've been i've been labeled a meerkat no you think you have very as far as like physically when you told me your background it makes complete sense norwegian yes you have all of the features yeah my family is like heavy heavy norwegian like even the church services once a week are done in Norwegian they're from a town where the Vikings came a long time ago and such an odd path that you know they came they ended up there but even the bowling alley in that town is called Nordic Lanes all the holiday meals are

Norwegian food everything is have you ever been there to Norway yeah oh yeah oh do you love it yeah yeah do you feel like when you go back I'm Brazilian, and I haven't been back to Brazil yet, but they always say when you go back to, like, your motherland, your soul feels it. Is that true? Absolutely. Absolutely, and I think the magic of that culture is very active in my blood. is very active in my blood. So, you know, the, when I'm able to, you know, tap into that depending on certain moon phases

and, you know, I, kinda, it's hard not to say ritual because people just take it and run a ritual is something that you do over and over and over again it doesn't have to be something satanic no not at all that's what's so sad is that the ocd people have rituals i have rituals right all right but the but what's so sad is that magic is so real and it's it's such a it's been erased from our entire history because it's so scary to know that we all have the power to create a product out of a dream and you know even you know if we're just speaking about you know uh moon phases like the the beauty of tapping into that like you know when people struggle with

fasting or something like if they would just tap into what like ikarashi which is an indian um practice of fasting which is 11 days after the full moon or new moon either one the the pull of the moon is a lot less so the demand for your body to have food and water on that day is is the least i love that that's fascinating because the moon makes women have their periods. It makes the tides. Yeah, so there's so much power in that. So much power. There's so much power in that. So there's the least amount of pull from the moon on that day,

so you're able to go that whole day without really feeling that urge. If you work up to that point, you could just start there. um, you know, work up to that point and you could just start there. It's a really, really special day if you're ever trying to, uh, you know, get into that because it helps your, your body kill all the sicknesses. Like when you, when you practice those things, your cells, you know, turn over and it's a lot of magic and just, just that practice. But, um, there's a lot of magic and everything. And if you can just, I wish more people didn't demonize it as much as they do. And I've just feel like even, you know,

not to get into religion because I don't really talk about religion that much on the podcast, but you know, even Christianity has taken so many things from pagans and you know, there's just, there's a whole world out there that if people just kind of explored it they would see that it's not bad and it's not evil it's not like what they portray in the movies and it's not like good which bad which of course there's bad people who do bad things with good things that they're given but that doesn't mean that that's how it has to be yeah

but i i guess i i also enjoy that it's a scary idea because it would then just become oversaturated. True. oversaturated and true it's you know i don't know you need you need you need some people to be over on that side so that i always say we are the kids from the witches that were burned word your friendship with my husband i think is the cutest thing i've ever seen because he is in desperate need of a little brother right and i don't know maybe you need a big brother too and he just absolutely loves you and adores you like this man like he just he's like kelsey calls you kelsey and it's just the cutest thing ever and he just really i don't know it's like you guys are just like kindred spirits i agree which is so interesting given that we started out you know hating each other

yeah let's talk about it you know that was actually so long ago I mean uh you know for the new jelly fans I knew him as a rapper and for the new MGK fans I am a rapper and I forgot what started all of it I mean I know me and Yella I think it was him just kind of sticking up for Yella yeah me and Yella didn't you know we didn't rock with each other yeah he's very loyal and uh it kind of got to a point though where like a lot of you know it was there was a lot of street shit and gang shit behind it um on both ends and i think if i'm not mistaken two of our big homies so dope together like on through from the ohio to nashville slash atlanta connection and they were both like y'all white boys gotta chill because it's fucking a business so uh i don't think they realize how intertwined like ohio nashville and

atlanta are yeah Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's it's it's like this. So I learned that moving into Nashville. I never knew, you know, because I'm from the West Coast. So I was just like thought the West Coast shit was going on. Never knew. And then when I moved out to Nashville and Jay told me about like, you know, the GDs and, you know, all that stuff.

The gang culture and the drug culture between all those like those highways are really wild. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. So through through that i mean there was always respect i'm sure you know because at the end of the day we were all putting out hot shit and you know the handful of fucked up tatted white boys is slim to none you know what i mean like especially at that time the ones who

had uh you know made it past a mixtape buzz so you know uh a lot of ego yeah but also you kind of you're all just waiting for each other to be like yo i fuck with you right so once that happened we were locked in because obviously then you you respect each other's g too so you know because you know that where each other comes from and all that and i i'm pretty sure jelly and i squashed it through a really drunk facetime yeah recently though right it was like it might have been like five no it was like five six years because then because the drunk facetimes would continue i remember right right um i think you had came back to nashville to do something with yella and we were going to be in the video but we weren't like in town or something and i think that's when you guys

had squashed it yeah right and that was a tense video shoot too because that was the first time me and yellow's people all like my people and yellow's people all were face to face since the beef was kind of squashed so we were all in there like yeah i mean it was a lot of a lot of guns a lot of egos yeah i think that was really everyone but everyone put it aside because music dude it's crazy how music brings people together and totally but i think you brought up a really good point because a lot of these beefs could be squashed by one setting egos aside But to all you you said all we needed to hear from the other person was that you fucked with me

And it would have just been you know Like I think a lot of people especially in the music industry need to hear that right now because it's like what are we beefing? For and all we all we want is validation Yeah, because and if you're like me and jelly like you you don't you don't get it from your parents so you want it from somebody else yeah and um that's why i dm you know any artists that i see doing their thing whether they fuck with me or not i'm always like you know i like this yeah whatever so i feel like that's what the ogs are supposed to do to the people that are coming up in the game i feel like you guys for you to do that I think is awesome because my husband does that too and I think that just speaks

volumes of your character because not a lot of people will do that yeah they didn't do it to me they still don't do it to me so I you know I'm lonely in that sense Jelly's one of the few people who you know rides for me publicly which means a lot. The amount of authenticity behind how much he says, "'I love this dude,' speaks for a hundred other people who can say it half-heartedly." So, and I really actually just appreciate the the hours that we've spent where my temper is in a different my temperament is in a different place than his is um and i'm you know i still have this i love this quote actually i'm a quote person too yeah i have so

many of your quotes in here so So if you see me look down, I'm just looking at these pages of notes that I have for you. These cats fuck with me. This was something that Halsey had said to me about me. She said, a child who grows up in a village where he wasn't held grows up to burn the world down so they can feel the heat. Mm. That gives me goosebumps. And so a lot of that is still so present in my temperament. And Jelly is great about... Diffusing.

Diffusing. And I'll have things where I bring to him like, hey, I'm mad about this at you. And he's able to hold space for it and redirect it. And at the same time, make me feel validated for the emotions and feelings I have. And then give me a solution as well. feelings I have and then give me a solution as well. So I, I, uh, was really, really lucky to meet your husband and make a, you know, gain a big brother. Well, he feels the same about you. And I think this is going to be a lifelong friendship and I am here for it. I think you guys compliment each other. So let's talk about mental health

and sobriety. Where's your sobriety journey now? So let's talk about mental health and sobriety. Where's your sobriety journey now? I'm completely sober from everything. I don't drink anymore. I haven't drank since last August. And you hold to that because I actually wanted you to have a drinking contest with my husband. And you were like, no, I'm sober.

It just kills me because I just know I would have fucking drank that man under the table. If you ever do, we're not encouraging it. But if you ever do, please don't. It was hard. And when we were shooting Lonely Road and he rented out the bowling alley and the drinks kept coming, that was probably the second night in this process that I've had

where I've ever just been looking. And it was probably just from that place of ego where I was just like, Jelly, I just want to drink you under the table in this high ass altitude oh dude after i've been sober yeah and then we showed up to set the same time the next day and i saw his condition and i saw mine and i was like yeah i made the right choice no literally he tries to get me to drink all it was rough he showed up and he was like bubba just tell me when tell me when the camera's rolling i'll uh I'll step out when when right when

it's time he texts me he's like I'm so fucking hungover I'm like good yeah I'm like I love when he does that to himself because then it makes he takes a break from drinking so I'm like yeah you know have a ball honey do whatever you I said it's high elevation so just pace yourself and he's like I got this I'm like whatever so you're off everything. Is your mental health better now that you're sober? Or is that when the real battle has begun? Because I know when I got sober in 2017, it was sobriety sucks. It was the hardest journey that I went on

because then I had to get to know myself. And that was the real battle. I had to get to know myself without something in my system. You know, masking. I had to get to know myself without something in my system. You know, masking. That was really... I get mad at sobriety a lot. You know, that is like, I'm still in that phase of...

Of uh... Rebelling. Yeah. But, you know i i didn't tell anybody outside of you know the closest to me but i went to rehab right when we got off the european tour last year and that was my first time i ever went to rehab and man they just gave me so many ways to operate the body and show where this, like, anger is coming from and methods to quell it. And I met with a lot of psychiatrists, some who gave up on me and many therapists who did the same. who did the same but i uh ended up falling into an awareness of what my condition is and have made peace with it and it's a constant it's a constant tightrope walk can we speak on what the condition is

that one feels a little too brand new for me to confidently um say but i've also been able to have my art and that's kind of where I feel really comfortable um take it out and wood carving you know I like doing that I like you can whittle some wood I can whittle some fucking wood i fucking saw that video you posted i was like this is crazy that takes precision yeah yeah that's my my grandpa's a norwegian uh wood carver so like tommy lee with the bonsais where tommy's cold he's cold with the bonsais. Yeah, what else do I do? Take care of my cats, be a volleyball dad, go on dates. Has Megan been a catalyst in your sobriety?

I think all my friends. I think everyone's just really, yeah, I mean, absolutely. Megan has for sure been extremely helpful in dealing with the kind of psychological withdrawals that come with getting off drugs yeah it's rough and being um um accepting that having fun isn't being a

self-medicated or like being hmm dang sorry I'm like I'm I'm bad at answering these questions cause I'm new to all this. I think you're doing great. I think you've crushed this entire interview. Am I putting you to sleep over there?

Absolutely. I've just been really happy seeing everybody. seeing everybody right like i love that i'm clear when i look at you know the person i love i'm really happy that when i'm clear when my daughter and i are having our conversations and i'm coming from a place of being centered and holding space for what a child needs from their parent, you know, which is patience and, um, advice that doesn't come from like, I just want to get through this so I can go and satiate this desire. Yeah. This like demon in me, you know, like that's like demon in me you know like that's been a huge reward for me and I give a lot of props a lot of props to everyone around me from for never quitting before I got to this point because I really hope I'm a lot more of like a pleasure to be around and

and I have it's funny this is this is my this is much my cat that kind of your emotional support cat no this is the this is the troubled one really this is me in cat form right here but every time you talk about something serious or like you are kind of like tied up on your words they is it he or she is it he he chimes in have you noticed that yeah he's like i got you i got you dad and he just purred for the first time in two years so he was a lot like how I feel I was where, you know, Megan was, she saw like who I truly was and she was just waiting for that to be able to come out. You know, cause that's, that's the reward when you have a soulmate is to be able to be connected with that person's soul. And when you're blocking it and covering it with all these things you weren't able to see it and you know same goes for uh you know casey one of the biggest things that killed me in that relationship was when she would

be like dad i know when you're high so you you that is like the ultimate sign of like just disappointment in yourself. And yeah, I continue to, you know, embrace that this journey is going to be hard for me, but I accept it and forgive myself for... I really don't know. I'm also really hard on myself, very self-deprecating. So I guess, yeah, I'm just happy that I'm able to start to be comfortable enough to show people who I am because i kind of depended on my art to do

that and you got to understand that a lot of people aren't gonna listen to listen yeah so um and jelly inspired me to do that too he was kind of like man you gotta you gotta get out there and talk and show people who you are i mean all my friends mod huge huge advocate for being like man i just wish people could see who i see megan huge advocate for that mod loves you he started crying on the podcast when he was talking about you guys's friendship i love him to death now sitting that sunken pit over there and smoke 30 cigarettes with him at 3 a.m talking about life and bitching about sobriety and just getting it out there. You know, all my friends, like even when Slim came and Ashley's over there and all these people

that have just been with me through this whole ride, I really just kinda wanna, that thought of when you die, how will people remember you, I don't necessarily think it's, man, he made great songs. You want people to be like, man, what a great, you know, I could call on that person whenever I needed something. That person was always there for me. But you can't be there if your mind is on Neptune. So that's how they say people will always remember you for how you made them feel

oh it's a good one yeah that's how i'm operating right now i just like i just yeah i think you're doing great dude i suck at talking uh i think i I don't know. We did about two hours, right? I think, yeah. I think you did great. So wrapping up, what can we expect from you moving forward? Because you did take it, are we going back to rap? Are we staying in the rock genre? Or are we just going to do whatever the fuck we feel like doing?

I'm doing whatever the fuck I feel like doing attaboy country i'm doing whatever the fuck i feel like doing i love rapping i love playing my guitar i love belting out whatever i'm holding inside in sentences that feel like an explanation of feelings and yeah I don't know I I would honestly say like at this point nothing I've done will be repeated so everything will be new which will come with some more controversy only this time my both my feet are on the ground and I'm unstoppable and I also don't give a fuck anymore art wins and heart wins and i got both let's fucking go well i'm proud of you and kels i think you did fucking phenomenal in this interview can we give him a round of applause

i think you did amazing you did so good and thank you buddy dude thank you for coming on the podcast i'm so happy to have you thank you you. My cats have absolutely shit up everywhere. I know you can smell it. I'm so sorry. We chose the room right next to where the litter box is. It's totally fine. It was a vibe and we just loved being here. So thank you so much.

And thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Dumb Blonde. We will see you guys next week. Bye.