With hosts, musicians and guests participating in List A every week, it takes a lot to impress the workers at 30 Rock. But that’s exactly what Machine Gun Kelly – the rocker-turned-rapper playing the show for the first time on January 30th, managed to do.
“There are not many people here [because of COVID]”Said a 30 Rock staff member,” and usually everyone is pretty blasé. But this guy caused a bit of a stir. ”
Indeed, few people travel higher this week than Colson Baker, an ultra-tattooed 6-foot-four – the real name of the 30-year-old star – who went on the runway for John Varvatos and could be a model if he didn’t. fi ‘I dealt with an album no. 1 (“Tickets to My Downfall”, his fifth LP), a hot acting career and maybe even putting a rock on the engagement finger of his girlfriend Megan Fox. As reported by Page Six, the actress was seen in New York on Thursday, wearing a “huge glitter”.
Baker felt lightly in Manhattan as paparazzi took pictures of him and Fox outside 30 Rock – where he works this week with his close friend and co-star “The Dirt,” Pete Davidson – but again, s -he might not be in a hurry to get married. Fox is still married to her 10-year-old husband, 90210 actor Brian Austin Green, with whom she shares three sons, although she filed for divorce in November and said they broke up a year earlier.
She met Baker, who uses her real name when she acts, on the set of the movie “Midnight in the Switchgrass” in March, and they practically did an Instagram PDA sport.
In August, she posted a photo of herself and Baker, both lightly dressed, and wrote, “Handsome, painful boy … My heart is yours.”
Green pulled back posting a photo with his sons, with the seemingly mocking headline “Very handsome boys … My heart is yours.”
But Baker – who was previously romantically linked to singers Halsey and Demi Lovato and Kanye West, formerly Amber Rose – is not easily embarrassed. This is a man who was once liked by a porn star while giving a concert.
Fox said of Baker on the “Give them Lala” podcast last year that she knew right away that he was what I call a twin flame. Instead of a soul mate, a twin flame is actually the place where a soul has risen to a level high enough that it can be divided into two different bodies at the same time. ”
Having a Hollywood sex symbol over him did not appear in Baker’s books, which became famous around 2011 as an Eminem lite. Like the Detroit rapper, he told a backstory story about a hardscrabble life that inspired songs of vulnerability and depression, as well as defiance and ambition.
Most interviews with Baker say that he was the son of missionaries who traveled the world as a child and that he later moved to Denver and then to the East Side of Cleveland, where he ended up in the ghetto.
But its real background is more murky. His father, James Colson Baker, was a human resources executive with companies such as Amoco, PepsiCo and Hewlett Packard in Baker’s childhood. James worked briefly in Cairo for Amoco, but his missionary work did not seem to have happened until Baker was in high school.
Baker’s mother, Sonia Kjos Waring, is an epidemiologist with a doctorate in veterinary entomology, but otherwise a mystery. Sources told The Post that she and Baker’s father lived in Texas around 1998, when Baker was 8 years old and decided to liquidate all their belongings and go overseas as missionaries.
But at the airport, Baker’s mother refused to go and told her husband she was leaving him for another man, whom she later married, a relative told the Post.
I don’t think it was rap [Machine Gun Kelly’s] end game. Now he is living his true dream. Hot girlfriend, acting career.
A music manager on Machine Gun Kelly
It’s unclear if Baker had a relationship with his mother after that. Calls and emails to his mother and stepfather went unanswered. Both her maternal uncle and a man at her maternal grandmother’s house hung up when the name “Colson Baker” was mentioned.
“I’m not interested,” they both said.
A representative for Baker did not return a request for comment.
Baker grew up with his father, with whom he had a troubled relationship.
“I came from an extremely religious and extremely strict father, and he wouldn’t even let me hold my pen the way I wanted to hold my pen,” Baker said. “That made me completely rebel and completely cut off communication, because I didn’t want to have anything in common with him.”
Elizabeth Brandl, an Illinois teacher who worked with and befriended James Colson Baker, reminded him that “the perfect executive with a sun-kissed smile.
But then the next day you hit him and he just seemed to be falling apart, “Brandl told The Post. “She was not confident. He came from a small farming community and could have gone that far. He talked about marrying this fabulous girl. Then he left him and broke his heart. “
James, who had studied theology, became more religious after his wife left, Brandl said. He and his son clashed so much that Baker often left home, “living hand in hand with friends,” she said.
Brandl said James was upset with his son’s lifestyle, but “always loved him,” she said.
Winning the nickname Machine Gun Kelly for his fast-paced rap style, Baker released his first mixed band in 2006. In 2009, he won the amateur night at Harlem’s Apollo – the first rapper to do so.
From there, he was discovered by Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jimmy Iovine, who signed Baker to Interscope Records.
In 2011, Baker gained importance with a mixtape called “Lace Up” which became, among the fans, a movement that means to prepare, to present yourself, no matter what happens. For Baker, this ethos began when he became a parent at just 18, while his high school friend Emma gave birth to their daughter Casie – now 12, and her father’s frequent companion.
Online fans are rhapsodic about how Machine Gun Kelly’s songs about trying to overcome substance abuse – he talked about being addicted to Adderall – and sometimes suicidal despair helped.
Baker gave up on Eminem in what many say was a PR stunt that helped the young rapper. In 2012, Baker wrote on Twitter that Eminem’s 16-year-old daughter, Hailie, was “hot as fk.” In 2018, Eminem released a devastating song, “It’s Not the Same”. Baker followed with his own answer, “Rap Devil”, after which Eminem held him with “Killshot”.
“MGK is pretty brilliant,” a music manager told The Post, who has seen him since his early days in Cleveland.
“He dreamed of making it big and started getting there, being a rapper. He said, who is the giant in this game. I’m going to put the bear in so long until I get a reaction and I’m noticed. Went. Eminem noticed and reacted … But I don’t think it was rap [Baker’s] end game. Now he is living his true dream. Hot girlfriend, acting career. He achieved success using psychology as well as his talent. ”
Indeed, Baker went from being a rapper in the 2014 film “Beyond the Lights” to starring in “Bird Box”, the Showtime series “Roadies” and “Big Time Adolescence” and “The King of Staten Island” – the last two movies with his close friend, Pete Davidson.
Despite the rocky relationship with his father, when James fell ill in 2019, Baker wrote on Twitter: “I should have told him that I loved him years ago. It breaks my heart, which I have lost all this time. After James died in July, Baker wrote on Twitter that “I have never felt such deep pain in my life.”
A few days before his debut in SNL, Baker remembered his late father.
“I remember when I was a kid watching SNL every weekend with my aunt and dad,” she wrote on Twitter. “Because I’m not here to see this moment, I’ll perform the song I wrote for them on the show. Let’s hope I feel them there. ”