Machine Gun Kelly Mocks Slipknot, Calls Them ‘Old, Weird Dudes With Masks’

Machine Gun Kelly hit the stage at Chicago’s Riot Fest over the weekend, stopping his performance at one point to mock Grammy-winning metal band Slipknot as “old, weird dudes with masks.” The 31-year-old rapper-turned-pop-punk singer, whose real name is Colson Baker, was playing on one of the festival’s stages at the same time as Slipknot, when he paused his set to ridicule the band and their fans. “Turn the lights up. Let me see who chose to be here instead of with all the old, weird dudes with masks,” Kelly said, per the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Midnight in the Switchgrass star then added, “Hey, you all know what I’m really happy that I’m not doing? Being 50 years old, wearing a f—in’ weird mask on a f—in’ stage.” While Kelly never clarified why he chose to lash out at Slipknot, it is possibly due to some comments that lead singer Corey Taylor made on the Cutter’s Rockcast podcast back in February. During the interview, Taylor said, “I [hate] the artists who failed in one genre and decided to go rock – and I think he knows who he is. But that’s another story.” While he never explicitly stated who he was referring to, many speculated that Taylor was referring to Kelly, who traded in his hip-hop career and released a pop-punk album — Tickets to my Downfall — in September 2020.

Machine Gun Kelly, a 31-year-old adult who dyed his tongue black, bashes Slipknot for wearing masks. https://t.co/WYKaFMrN71

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) September 20, 2021

Notably, his comments about Slipknot isn’t the first time Kelly has openly feuded with another artist, as back in 2018, he launched into a war of words with Eminem. The beef reportedly started a month prior, when Eminem surprise-released the album Kamikaze and took verbal jabs at Kelly on one of the tracks. Among the reasons Eminem set his sights on Kelly were reports that Kelly had called the “Lose Yourself” rapper’s daughter Hailie Jade “hot as f—” on Twitter several years ago — though, Eminem later stated that’s not entirely why.

“The reason that I dissed him is actually a lot more petty than that. The reason I dissed him… First he said, ‘I’m the greatest rapper alive since my fave rapper banned me from Shade 45 [Eminem’s Sirius XM rap channel].’ I could give a f— about your career. You think I actually f—in’ think about you? Do you know how many f—in’ rappers that are better than you? You’re not even in the conversation,” Eminem confessed in an interview. After Kamikaze was released and listeners caught wind of Eminem’s disses, Kelly fired back with the song “Rap Devil,” a spoof of Eminem’s “Rap God.”

Eminem then responded to that by dropping “Killshot,” a diss track aimed squarely at MGK. Notably, Business Insider reported that, at the time, “Killshot” had the “biggest debut of a hip-hop song” in the history of YouTube — where it premiered — raking up over 38 million views in just about 24 hours. Neither reps for Kelly nor Slipknow have yet responded to the pop-punker’s new Riot Fest comments.