Machine Gun Kelly Shuts Down Fan's Suspicions In A Brutal Way

Machine Gun Kelly surprised fans in 2020 when he pivoted from hip-hop and released his pop-punk album "Tickets to My Downfall." At the time, MGK hoped that his change in musical genres would motivate listeners to change as well. "I hope that this album inspires some kids to go and pick a guitar up," he said on "New Music Daily Radio with Zane Lowe" in May 2020 (via Guitar World). In fact, the Cleveland-bred talent said his foray into guitar playing had been an introduction for several fans. "But I've had plenty of people be like, 'Dude, this is the first time I've ever seen someone play a guitar live,'" MGK recalled.

Although the "General Admission" artist was best-known for his rap albums, his first stab at music as a kid was with a guitar his father had bought him. Eventually, MGK's dad left him to be raised by an aunt, but years later the pair reconciled and formed a bond over music. "He got me my first guitar and I didn't understand the power of that when I was a kid," MGK told Spin in 2020. It was after the death of Kelly's father that he decided to try his hand at producing guitar-based music.

The album was a hit, but MGK's new sound got noticed for all the wrong reasons when an Instagram video of him enthusiastically air-guitaring on top of a desk for record company executives went viral. Two years later, a different video went viral that questioned MGK's musical integrity.

TikToker Gunnar DuGrey created a viral video, which seemingly showed that Machine Gun Kelly did not actually play the guitar while performing live. In the TikTok, DuGrey — who works at a music shop — showed a pink Schecter guitar that was similar to MGK's, and pointed out a "kill switch" on the instrument that muted the sound when activated. DuGrey showed multiple photos of the "Drunk Face" artist holding his guitar with the kill switch seemingly on, which would mean MGK was not playing live.

MGK saw the viral video and had the perfect response to the TikToker's claim. The musician made a TikTok duet that played DuGrey's video while disproving the accusations. "He reversed engineered it to look like that," the pop-punk star claimed while turning the kill switch to show the guitar could still emit music with the switch flipped downward. "You should go watch the performance because you can clearly hear it's live," Kelly said in response to the accusatory video. DuGrey saw MGK's response and retracted his claim on TikTok. He admitted that MGK clearly did play his guitar while performing.

It was not always easy for the rapper-turned-rocker to play the guitar. Although MGK received his first one at a young age, he abandoned the pursuit. "[I] bought a guitar after my first warped tour at 11 years old," he tweeted in 2021. "[I] stopped playing because i didn't believe in myself ... it took me all this time to finally listen to my gut," MGK added.