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It Has Always Been About the Music for mgk
The Artist Recently Teamed up With Trippie Redd for Their Collaborative Ep ‘Genre : Sadboy.’ Now, He’s Truer to Himself Than Ever Before.
mgk has topped the Billboard 200 chart with his 2022 pop-punk entry, ‘mainstream sellout.’ He has been nominated for GRAMMY Awards, won Billboard Music Awards and earned hundreds of millions of Spotify streams. Today, mgk is the main attraction at Dust Studios in Los Angeles.
A fresh coat of ink covers the rapper’s arms and chest, mimicking the rain clouds he loves so much back in his hometown of Cleveland. “It was supposed to be spread out over the course of a year, just because of the amount of ink,” he reveals. “But I did mine in a month.”
When people ask if he’d been sedated for the process, mgk says he’s shocked. “My eyes started opening to this phenomenon, which is essentially opting out of the point of what a tattoo is, which is cathartic pain.”
mgk soon references his lyrics, which — particularly on his latest project, an extended collaborative EP with rapper and fellow Ohio native Trippie Redd — tend to be expressions of isolation, roller coaster relationships, shifting between self-medication and sobriety, and the purgatorial aspects of extreme fame.
“I’ll call out for help in my lyrics, and not one fucking person will give two shits,” he says, reasoning that his public bluster and occasional hot temper must indicate stoicism.
“Essentially, I think they believe the exoskeleton of confidence that I had to put on because I was being fucked with by the outside world. That’s even from down to idols that I had growing up,” he continues.
“Like, they all turned on me, you know what I mean? And I’m like, ‘Guys, what? What am I supposed to do? Because I can’t just be a turtle and go into my shell. I have to come out. I have to bite back.’”

Most recently, mgk has poured his innermost thoughts into his aforementioned project with Redd, ‘genre : sadboy,’ a spare, ruminative collection of tracks that gently dovetail between trap, hip-hop and acoustic pop. “I can’t quiet my thoughts/ Don’t let them out this Pandora’s box/ I ruined my wedding, now I wish I had a rope/ So, I could still tie the knot,” mgk spits on the sorrowful closer “summer’s gone,” which, at face value, appears to reference his broken engagement to Megan Fox.
His ongoing friendship with Redd, who appeared on 2019 single “Candy” and on 2020’s “all I know,” has been important to him both personally and professionally.
“Growing up in Ohio, everyone kind of knows about everyone,” mgk says. “I fell in love with how much of an art piece he was. I related in so many ways — how easily misunderstood he could be. Because I was rapping in the early 2010s, but I was wearing studded denim jackets, punk patches, ripped jeans and things that weren’t really aesthetically hip-hop.”
When the pair return to Ohio, which they do often, mgk and Trippie usually attempt to meet up and record. During one session, which mgk calls a “special night,” they began recording music, which kicked off their path to making what would become ‘genre : sadboy.’ “We felt really good about these records because they didn’t feel like some of the other records we had made. [In the past], we had experimented with pitching our voices really high, or doing stuff that felt like 2017, 2018 rager music. Stuff that if we didn’t put it out now, then it wouldn’t make sense to put it out later.”
Around the time they teamed up to create ‘genre : sadboy,’ mgk says, “life started to kick both of our asses simultaneously.” He and Redd would spend hours on FaceTime, talking about everything from each other’s psyches to “magic,” “family” and “why certain things are or are not happening for us personally [and] career-wise. … It’s nice to have somebody you can find solace in.”
The idea of feeling misunderstood comes up frequently in mgk’s lyrics. Active since the mid-2000s, mgk grabbed the baton from Y2K nu-metal upstarts like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park and spent the next two decades merging rap and rock as it suited his mood and creative expression.
As for the EP title ‘genre : sadboy,’ mgk points out the symbolism behind its artwork. “On the cover, ‘genre’ is over my body because that’s one of the big arguments behind mgk: ‘What genre is he? Why is he allowed to do this genre? I don’t like that he does this genre.’ And then ‘sadboy’ is over Trippie’s body because the argument with Trippie is that fans love his ‘sad boy music,’ and they’re mad that he released [2023’s] ‘Mansion Musik,’ which is rager songs. They wanted the ‘sad Trippie’ back.”
Ultimately, neither mgk nor Redd were interested in winning over critics or new audiences with their latest collaboration. This one’s for the existing fans — and, of course — for themselves. “I wanted to just give it away right away,” mgk says of the short time leading to the EP’s release. “Like, yeah, this is a niche project. We’re not doing this for numbers. We’re not doing this to try and get the masses on our side. This is for people who are just sad and want to put this on. Individually, I don’t think that [Trippie and I are] allowed to make those albums. Because people want a roller coaster.

We’re associated with hype shit. Our concerts are hype. I envy people like Lana [Del Rey] because they’re allowed to just make these mood albums. I wanted to have an excuse to make my own, and this seemed like the perfect place to do it.” Though he’d always hinted at having an expanded music palate, rolling through hip-hop to trap to metal, hard rock and pop, in 2020 mgk fully embraced the guitar, releasing the pop-punk-inspired “tickets to my downfall,” which featured drums and production by Travis Barker, who was swiftly turning into a genre godfather, appearing on WILLOW’s howling “t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l” and Avril Lavigne’s sneering pop-punk reentry “Love Sux.”
“He’s someone whose front door was always open to me plenty of times during ‘Tickets To My Downfall’ and ‘mainstream sellout,’” mgk says of Barker, who also produced the singer’s 2022 album. That album featured WILLOW on “emo girl” and Bring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes on the thrashing “maybe.”
Despite being credited with the 2020s pop-punk revival, raking in awards for ‘Tickets To My Downfall’ and hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with ‘mainstream sellout’ — not to mention nabbing high-profile TV and film roles (2018’s “Bird Box” and portraying Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee in 2019’s “The Dirt”) and earning over $30 million at the box office on the ‘mainstream sellout’ tour — mgk cannot help but feel underappreciated.
Sure, the numbers speak for themselves. But for someone as vulnerable as he is, mgk is quick to note that you can have the biggest and best house on the block — and it can still be empty when you get home.
Reflecting back on the last decade-plus of his life and career, mgk is blunt about the reality of his lived experience.
“I still haven’t found a home, because I didn’t grow up with one,” he says. “I also think a lot of people just skip my background. They just bury that whole thing and act like my life started when I was like 28 and started getting some real success. What about the 10 years I spent underground? What about those years on Warped Tour? When I did the pop-punk album, every band acted like I was brand new. And I was like, ‘But you guys were with me on those stages when I was opening for you at 1 p.m.’”
"So many people walk up to me and they’re like, ‘Dude, what you did, what you did,’ and I’m like, ‘Why is that narrative never told?’"
“I’ve never been a critic favorite,” mgk continues. “I never really looked to them [for] praise. I look to see if they have any valid points that maybe I could soak in and utilize for the next project. Which is why my next solo project will not be a rock album. But when I do decide to do a rock album, I’ve taken in so many of the critics’ opinions, which are actually valued and understood, that [it] will be a really, really intelligent, powerful rock album.”
So there it is: mgk’s next studio release will not be a rock album. “I think it’s always smart to give people what they want,” he ruminates. “And right now it feels like they want a rap album.” But does mgk want to do a rap album? “I do,” he says. “I’ve learned to drop every chip on my shoulder...

There is one part of my stomach that just cannot be filled by any other genre other than doing a great rap album.”
When mgk looks back at his favorite artists from earlier generations, ones that were deemed sellouts or not taken seriously, he holds a spark of hope. Maybe some years in the future, his critical success will catch up with those Spotify streams. “I remember blink-182 in middle school, and everyone said, ‘That’s such a poser band.’ Now, all those kids grew up, their egos dropped, they had families and now they’re all like, ‘Dude, I can’t wait to go see blink-182 at the When We Were Young festival.’ I pray that the same thing comes [for me]. Honestly, I don’t know. If it does, great; if it doesn’t, fuck it.
As soon as that redemption arc theory leaves his mouth, mgk changes his mind. “Actually, I don’t care. I do what I do because I love it. I’ve never been a money guy. I’ve never once looked at my bank account in my life. I am strictly here because there’s a hunger inside me that can’t be satiated. No matter how many records are sold, no matter how many concerts are sold out, I just am in love with music and in love with art.”

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