Machine Gun Kelly reflects on his feud with Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor in his new documentary, Life in Pink.
In the film, Kelly calls the war of words, which first went public when Kelly dissed Slipknot as “old weird dudes with masks” at last year’s Riot Fest, “unfortunate.”
“I think both of us let our egos get in the way,” Kelly says.
Following MGK’s initial comments, it was then revealed that Taylor had written a verse for Kelly’s Tickets to My Downfall album that ultimately wasn’t used. At the time, Kelly called the verse “terrible,” and his hostility toward Taylor and Slipknot was met in kind by crowds at rock and metal festivals, which booed and gave him the middle finger.
“I was a fan of Slipknot, and I was a fan of Corey,” Kelly explains in the doc. “That’s why I’d asked him to get on Tickets. He obviously had mutual respect, too, because he cut a verse. I tried to give notes back, like, ‘Oh this wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, can we try this?’ And, respectfully, he was like, ‘No.’ And I was like, ‘OK, cool.’ So we didn’t use it. Then I heard him on a podcast.”
During that podcast, which aired sometime between the initial collab attempt and Kelly’s Slipknot diss, Taylor called out an unnamed artist who “failed in one genre and decided to go rock,” seemingly referring to MGK.
“I could’ve handled it differently,” Kelly now says. “I should have just picked up the phone and been like, ‘Hey dude, why would you say that?’ But instead we all reacted ridiculous.”
Taylor has not yet responded to Kelly’s latest comments.
Life in Pink is streaming now on Hulu.
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