Corey Taylor rebukes Machine Gun Kelly after feud: “Why don ’t you suck every inch of my dick?”
To clarify, that was not meant in a friendly way.
Image: Kevin Mazur / Scott Dudelson / Getty
Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor has rebuked rapper and pop-punk artist Machine Gun Kelly, after a fan asked him to comment on the public spat between the two.
Back in September 2021, Machine Gun Kelly took time out of his set at Riot Fest to mock Slipknot, who were playing at the same time as him. “Hey, you wanna know what I’m really happy that I’m not doing?” Kelly asked between songs. “Being 50 years old wearing a fucking weird mask on a fucking stage… Fucking shit.”
Kelly later said that his anger was sparked by Corey Taylor taking shots at him in an interview, after he had been rejected from performing on Kelly’s Tickets To My Downfall. Taylor then shared screenshots of email conversations that showed Kelly praising Taylor’s proposed contribution before Taylor decided to pull out of the project due to Kelly offering too many notes on his performance.
In a recent Q&A session at this year’s ShipRocked, fan-shot footage shows Taylor responding to the spat. “For those of you that don’t know, MGK doesn’t like me very much. And let me follow that up by saying I don’t care. I won’t fill you in on the whole fucking story because you can go online and look it all up. However, I will say this: he maintains that I started it. The truth is he started it,” Taylor stated.
“You don’t get to walk into a genre with the history, with the work… The fact is that this genre really doesn’t get the fucking respect that it deserves.
“You don’t get to walk in as some weird substitute teacher and pretend that you can tell us what to wear – boots, shoes, house fucking shoes, slippers. Why don’t you suck every inch of my dick? You don’t get to do that. And these are bands that maybe I don’t even fucking know, but guess what? I fucking respect them because they get on fucking stage and they fucking give every fucking thing they’ve got.
Kelly attracted widespread criticism from figures in the heavy music scene. Many of these pointed to the irony of Kelly, whose image isn’t exactly subdued, calling out Slipknot’s stage presentation.
Additionally, Kelly has only recently started making rock music – specifically, pop-punk. This caused several people to point out that while Kelly mocked the 50-year-olds wearing masks on stage, he is a 31-year-old making music often associated with teenagers. Trivium’s Matt Heafy took to Twitter; to say: “I’d like to formally diss Machine Gun Kelly for ‘being 31 years old wearing a fucking 16-year-old pop-punk cosplay identity on a fucking stage.’”