Machine Gun Kelly Reveals His Father Was Tried at 9 Years Old for His Grandpa’s Murder

Machine Gun Kelly opened up about his troubled upbringing and revealed his father was tried for his father’s murder at just 9 years old.

“The story that was told to me was always that their dad dropped the gun and his head essentially blew off,” Machine Gun Kelly, 34, explained on the Monday, August 5, episode of the “Dumb Blonde” podcast. “And so that all happened in the room with my dad, the police came and found the shotgun under the bed, so him and my grandmother were tried for the murder.”

The musician, whose real name is Colson Baker, was shocked to hear the question as it was a little-known piece of information about his past.

“I always used to get so mad at him when I was a kid,” he recalled of his dad. “‘Cause if I scared him or he heard a loud boom or a loud noise, he would freak out, like gnarly freakout … And then you think about a kid, who was on trial at 9 years old for the murder of his father.”

The “Bad Things” artist disclosed that his father struggled with a split personality and noted that schizophrenia was prevalent in his family. He also compared his father to Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, explaining to host Bunnie Xo that his father’s actions were always “black or white.”

“There’s no gray area. Every piece of clothing is folded perfectly,” he recalled. “I didn’t hear the word ‘mom’ during my whole teenage years, all I heard was ‘whore.’”

The “Bloody Valentine” singer also shared that he was celebrating one year of sobriety after secretly attending rehab in August 2023. MGK opened up about his struggle with the abuse of “weed and alcohol,” as well as hydrocodone and Percocet and admitted that he “loved snorting Vyvanse.”

“I didn’t tell anybody outside of the [people] closest to me. That was my first time I ever went to rehab,” the Texas native explained, adding that he learned “so many ways to operate [his] body and show where [his] anger is coming from and the methods to quell it.”

MGK gave a special shoutout to his on-and-off partner Megan Fox, praising her as “extremely helpful” in his sobriety journey, particularly during his “psychological withdrawals.”

“I continue to embrace that this journey is gonna be hard for me, but I accept it and forgive myself,” he continued. “I’m also really hard on myself. 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.”

MGK and Megan, 38, met on the set of Midnight in the Switchgrass in early 2020 and made their relationship Instagram official in August of that year. They got engaged in January 2022 but rumors of a split surfaced in late 2023.

During a “Call Her Daddy” podcast appearance in March, Megan confirmed that she and MGK had called off their engagement at some point in the past but did not comment on the current status of their relationship.