Machine Gun Kelly, 31, is facing controversy following an old video of him that resurfaced on Twitter and TikTok from 2013.
In June of that year, the rapper (whose real name is Colson Baker) was interviewed by Fuse. When the interviewer asked the then 23-year-old Baker who his celebrity crush was, he replied “I don’t care who my first celebrity crush was, right now it’s Kendall Jenner,” who at the time was 17 years old.
When asked if he was “waiting for the model to turn 18,” Baker insisted that he “didn’t care” about her age and implied that he could get away with grooming her due to her celebrity status and naivety. “I hope I’m snagging that,” he continued, “don’t let me move to LA, I’m finding her.” He then disturbingly went on to say, “I don’t care, say what you want, if Kendall Jenner is in your bedroom naked and you’re 50, you’re going.”
Fans of both the rapper and his famous fiancée Megan Fox took to Twitter, writing that they were “apalled,” “grossed out,” and “stunned” by the artist’s “creepy comments” and how he was dead-set on pursuing Jenner. As one user wrote, his “scary demeanor” seemed like he “wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
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In the video, Baker attempts to justify his wanting to date a girl under the legal age of consent by listing male rock stars who dated pre-teens when they were well into their thirties and forties (and he clearly didn’t see the problems and utter wrongness of that).
He mentions Robert Plant, the lead singer of Led Zeppelin and Guns N Roses lead singer Axl Rose (who both have documented histories of pursuing young girls, some under 15, when they were in their thirties).
He even says that Robert Plant, who was “one of the greatest lead singers ever” dated a girl “who was 14” and Axl Rose, who was “one of the biggest badasses ever” dated a girl “who was 16 and wrote a song on his first album about the girl that was 16,” (as if saying this makes statutory rape okay).
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Machine Gun Kelly, who often speaks about loving “rock n roll,” probably realizes that the genre has a longstanding glorification of sexual assault and pursuing underage girls whether blatantly its lyricism or in “legendary” stories about rock stars that he tried to justify here.
With conversations around #MeToo and sexual abuse survivors becoming more notable in recent years, many fans on Twitter wrote that it’s time to truly revisit the careers of rock stars and the young girls who were all too often swept up in illegal and traumatic activities.
The rapper has yet to comment on the 2013 video but if we were Fox right now, this would be a major red flag. As another user put it, sexual assault, statutory rape and seeking underage girls are serious topics and nothing to joke or brag about.
