Features : 74 minutes in the insane life of Machine Gun Kelly

Machine Gun Kelly’s house in LA is the sort of place that makes it a shame they don’t do MTV Cribs any more. A gothic-style mansion arranged around a huge central staircase, the place is decorated with ornate chandeliers and elaborate tapestries, but there are plenty of clues that this is a young man’s bachelor pad. One room, which looks out onto the swimming pool, is given over to a hoop-shooting basketball arcade game, a pool table and a Monster Energy-branded drinks fridge.

Brad Elterman

He has come a long way since he burst onto the scene in 2011 with a party-rap tune called “Wild Boy” – which has now racked up more than 135 million views on YouTube – and quickly set about living up to that sobriquet. Earlier in the week he celebrated his 29th birthday with a bacchanalian party in Hollywood attended by the likes of Tommy Lee, Pete Davidson and Marilyn Manson, who presented him with the gift of a dildo with Manson’s own face on it. Obviously.

Yet for all his hard-partying ways, Machine Gun Kelly is difficult to pigeonhole. Sure, on the one hand he’s a 6ft 4in bleach-haired rapper from Cleveland, Ohio, who has beefed with Eminem, but he has also enjoyed pop success, collaborating with Camila Cabello on “Bad Things” (409m Spotify plays). As an actor (he performs under his real name, Colson Baker), he had a break-out role this year playing to type as fellow wild boy – and new friend – Tommy Lee in Netflix’s Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt, yet he’s also a doting father to his ten-year-old daughter, Casie, and concerned enough about his own health that shortly after we meet he syringes a shot of oregano oil into his mouth. “For every foul thing I put in my body I try to pump something good in there,” he explains. “Especially after the weekend I’ve just had.”

With a fourth album, Hotel Diablo, out now and more acting jobs on the way, including a role alongside Davidson in the comedy Big Time Adolescence, Machine Gun Kelly sits down, sparks up a joint and takes the GQ&A...

I’m not a person who goes down and then has a rush of positivity to bring themselves back up

When was the last time you were in a police station?

What month are we in? I frequent police stations. There was one time I got pulled over – I don’t have a driver’s licence, but I was driving a friend’s car – and I had a gun. Obviously I told them there was a gun in the car. They put me and my friend, who was this girl I was speaking to at the time, in the cop car and we hooked up in the back.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

Working at Chipotle. It was the one that my high school [friends] would go to and I was working there right after I graduated. A lot of people when they came back for Christmas from colleges would come in and be like, “Damn! I thought you were supposed to be some big rapper now. What happened?” I was getting laughed at constantly and I was thinking, “Maybe I’m just going to be stuck working shitty jobs forever.”

Which of your tattoos means the most to you?

[He points to a red double-decker bus tattoo on his ribs with a date along the side.] What’s the date on there?

Five, eleven, 13.

So on 11 May 2013 I was walking across the street, freshly landed in Manchester. I was going to see if anyone had some weed. I do the one mistake that every foreign guy does: crossing the street looking the wrong way. This double-decker bus hit me so hard. My face was the first thing to get hit. All I remember is waking up and everyone screaming. I get up, my jeans are ripped. Everything is ripped. I go to the hospital and there’s nothing wrong. They did three MRIs, a CAT scan, all this stuff. The whole window of the double-decker was shattered. They were like, “There’s no way you got hit like that and there’s no internal bleeding or anything.” But I was fine.

I'd say sorry to my father. I have such a rule-abiding, amazing daughter and I was such a rule-breaking shitty son

If you could apologise to one person, who would it be and what would you say?

I’d say sorry to my father. I have such a rule-abiding, amazing daughter and I was such a rule-breaking, shitty son. The legal fees, the tens of thousands of dollars from the times I got arrested, the finding out your son missed a whole semester of high school because he was waking up and pretending to go but never going... I don’t know how he did it and I get why it took us 25 years to finally get along.

Is there a drug you’d never do again?

Opana. It’s like heroin. We snorted it. It was so dark. I’d never recommend it to anybody. One: it’s absolutely addictive. Two: to be addicted and to want that feeling over and over again... I’m not a person who goes down and then has a rush of positivity to bring themselves back up. I’m the type of person who likes to listen to sad music when I’m sad. I love to wallow and just sink and sink, so that’s why I’ll never touch that one again.

What’s the Machine Gun Kelly hangover cure?

It’s funny because you just saw me do it. An Antidote juice shot, which has oregano oil, leaf and flower thyme, garlic, Himalayan salt, ginger. Then I think you’ve got to roll and smoke a joint, because that settles everything. Finally, you have to realise the glory of water.

What’s your greatest fear?

Death – until a week ago.

What happened a week ago?

I met this... I wouldn’t even call her a human. She was more like a spirit. She put death in a way that made me not scared of going blank. We’ve been here before and we’ve died before. That moment of death is a scary moment and I think we’re born scared of it because we’ve experienced it so many times.

What’s the best thing you can cook?

I don’t cook. Period. My daughter makes me blueberry pancakes that I like a lot.

What does the future hold for Machine Gun Kelly?

I don’t know. That’s the good part about it, right? We don’t know.

Machine Gun Kelly is touring the UK 22-31 August. The Dirt is on Netflix now. Follow us on Vero for exclusive music content and commentary, all the latest music lifestyle news and insider access into the GQ world, from behind-the-scenes insight to recommendations from our Editors and high-profile talent.