machine gun kelly wiki : Richard Colson Baker (born April 22, 1990), known professionally as MGK or Machine Gun Kelly, is an American rapper, singer and actor from Cleveland, Ohio. MGK embarked on a musical career as a teenager, releasing a mixtape in 2006. He went on to release four more mixtapes.
MGK then secured a recording contract with Bad Boy and Interscope Records in 2011. His major label debut album, Lace Up, was released in October 2012 to positive response from critics. The record contained the singles "Wild Boy", "Invincible", "Stereo", and "Hold On (Shut Up)", and debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200 chart; it was later confirmed to have sold more than 178,000 copies. In early 2015, he released the singles "Till I Die" and "A Little More" for his second studio album, General Admission, which released in October 2015, and debuted at number four in the US. The album incorporated darker tones, rap rock, R&B, and storytelling.
MGK has also appeared in various films, starring in Beyond the Lights, as Kid Culprit. He appeared in Roadies as Wesley (a.k.a. Wes), before being cast in lead roles in Viral, Punk's Dead: SLC Punk 2
Richard Colson Baker was born on April 22, 1990, in Houston to missionary parents. Baker and his family moved all around the globe and took up residence abroad from Egypt to Germany, as well as throughout the United States, in Chicago, Denver, and Cleveland. He settled in Denver, along with his father, after his mother had left home, and the pair moved in with Baker's aunt. Following his father suffering from depression and unemployment, Baker endured bullying from other children in the neighborhood.He started listening to rap in the sixth grade, when he attended Hamilton Middle School, a school with an ethnically diverse student body in Denver, Colorado. The first three rappers that got him into the genre of hip hop as a child were Ludacris, Eminem and DMX, with Baker gaining interest in the genre after listening to DMX's "We Right Here" from the album The Great Depression (2001). Baker's home life was seldom stable, as he would regularly fight with his father. When he attended Denver's Thomas Jefferson High School, his father moved to Kuwait to work for the army and left him behind to live in his aunt's basement. During the course of living in the basement, Baker began experimenting with drugs and recorded his first amateur demo tape, "Stamp of Approval".
Following his father's departure, Baker stopped attending school and began to make a name for himself by calling out elder classmates. In 2005, his father returned to take them both to Kuwait before the pair were forced back stateside to Cleveland, where Baker attended Shaker Heights High School. While attending Shaker Heights High, he convinced a local t-shirt shop owner to become his manager, as the shop owner would double as an MC manager. Given the stage name Machine Gun Kelly by his fans due to his rapid fire delivery, he released the mixtape Stamp of Approval (2006). The release of the mixtape allowed for his reputation and profile to grow, which allowed MGK to begin performing at local Cleveland venues.
In March 2009, while he was on the verge of getting evicted, MGK traveled to Harlem's Apollo Theater, where he had consecutive victories, making him the first ever rapper to win at the Apollo Theater.He recorded music in his home studio which he refers to as the "Rage Cage",and started to gain exposure when he was featured on MTV2's Sucker Free Freestyle, where he freestyled numerous verses from his "Chip off the Block" single. In February 2010, he released his second mixtape 100 Words and Running, where he derived his catchphrase, "Lace Up", which started as a mixtape interlude, before making it a prominent reference in his music. Despite his rising popularity, MGK found himself working at Chipotle to afford rent, as well as being kicked out by his father after graduating high school. MGK soon also became a father. After he was kicked out, MGK had to move in with Slim Gudz and Dubo in his manager's mother's basement, where he wrote and recorded the majority of his first album.
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