MGK is Back on Track
By Daniel Sumpton | Misfit Media Columnist
Machine Gun Kelly has had a rocky perception as a superstar in the music industry. Many adore him and many loathe him but his recent record ‘emo girl,’ featuring the artist WILLOW definitely left him with more ridicule than praise from the general public.
Caught between a genre switch up from the album that revived his career, and the new general consensus that his new sound was too juvenile for an artist his age, it was hard to see what MGK’s next move would be. Was he going to return to a more hip-hop sound? Or was he going to charge full steam ahead with his new highly ridiculed sound and lyricism?
Luckily for us, the answer was a bit of both perfectly blended into a new brilliant single. As Ali Shutler from NME puts it, the song ‘Ay’ by MGK ‘sees the rap star turned rock star singing over an acoustic guitar.’ The line in MGK’s second verse particularly stand out, “Only comments I see are the bad ones.” He has clearly been impacted one way or another by his recent ridicule and is coming back with an adjusted approach. After the chorus kicks in for the second time with the enchanting high-pitched vocals repeating, “I don’t ever wanna fall when I’m this high,” the rap rock blend really comes together in the third verse.
With Lil Wayne as the featured artist, he takes the opportunity to make every line a clever reference to getting high, keeping consistent with the song’s theme. Melancholy lyrics like “Lean in my soda so I’ma need a shoulder,’ match Machine Gun Kelly’s equally dark lines such as ‘only playlists I like are the sad ones,’ and ‘I let the medicine in, I know it don’t help in the end.’ The song abruptly ends at only 2 minutes and 4 seconds in length, but leaves enough of an impact in that short period of time to be leaps better than anything MGK has released since 2020. Lil Wayne has released a series of criminally underrated projects in the past few years like the album ‘Funeral,’ and the mixtape that shortly followed with Rich the Kid ‘Trust Fund Babies,’ so it will be interesting to see if Machine Gun Kelly can keep up the good work without the help of a legendary rapper like Lil Wayne.