With A-list hosts, musicians and guests coming through “Saturday Night Live” every week, it takes a lot to impress the employees of 30 Rock. But that’s exactly what Machine Gun Kelly – the rapper turned rocker who first played the show on January 30 – managed to do.
‘There are not many people here [because of COVID]’Said a 30 Rock employee,’ and usually everyone is pretty blasé. But this man caused a bit of a stir. “
Indeed, few people this week ride higher than six-foot, ultra-tattooed Colson Baker – the real name of the 30-year-old star – who walked the runway for John Varvatos and could be a model if he wasn’t. I’m not working on a number 1 album (“Tickets to My Downfall”, his fifth LP), a hot acting career and maybe a stone on girlfriend Megan Fox’s engagement finger. As Page Six reported, the actress was spotted wearing a “ huge starlet ” in New York City on Thursday.
Baker looked at his leisure in Manhattan as paparazzi snapped photos of him and Fox outside of 30 Rock – where he’s working with his good friend and “The Dirt” co-star Pete Davidson this week – but then again, he may not be in a hurry. to marry. Fox is reportedly still married to her husband of 10 years, “90210” actor Brian Austin Green, with whom she shares three sons, although she filed for divorce in November and said they broke up a year earlier.
She met Baker, who uses his real name while acting, on the set of the movie “Midnight in the Switchgrass” in March, and they practically turned Instagram PDA into a sport.
In August, she posted a photo of herself and Baker, both scantily clad, with the caption, “Painfully beautiful boy … My heart is yours.”
Green fired back by posting a photo of his sons, with the seemingly derisive caption “Achingly beautiful guys … My heart is yours.”
But Baker – who previously had a romantic relationship with singers Halsey and Demi Lovato and Kanye West ex Amber Rose – is not easily embarrassed. This is a man who was once entertained by a porn star while performing in concert.
Fox said of Baker on the “Give them Lala” podcast last year that she “knew right away that he was what I call a twin flame. Instead of a soul mate, a twin flame is actually where a soul has risen to a high enough level. to be able to be split into two different bodies at the same time. “
Having a Hollywood sex symbol fawn didn’t seem in the cards for Baker, who became known as an Eminem lite around 2011. Like the Detroit rapper, he told a backstory to a hard scrabble life that inspired songs about vulnerability and depression, as well as defiance and ambition.
Most interviews with Baker say he was the son of missionaries who traveled the world when he was little and that he later moved to Denver and then to Cleveland’s East Side where he ended up in the ghetto.
But his real background is darker. His father, James Colson Baker, was a human resources executive at companies such as Amoco, PepsiCo and Hewlett Packard during Baker’s youth. James worked for Amoco in Cairo for a short time, but his missionary work doesn’t seem to have taken place until Baker was in high school.
Baker’s mother, Sonia Kjos Waring, is an epidemiologist with a doctorate in veterinary entomology, but otherwise a mystery. Sources told The Post that she and Baker’s father lived in Texas around 1998 when Baker was 8, and that they decided to liquidate all of their belongings and go abroad as missionaries.
But at the airport, Baker’s mother refused to go, telling her husband she would be leaving him for another man, whom she later married, a relative told the Post.
I don’t think rap was [Machine Gun Kelly’s] endgame. He is now living his real dream. The hot girlfriend, the acting career.
A music manager on Machine Gun Kelly
It is unclear whether Baker was still in a relationship with his mother afterwards. Calls and emails to his mother and stepfather went unanswered. Both his maternal uncle and a husband by his maternal grandmother hung up when the name was called “Colson Baker”.
“Not interested,” both said.
A Baker representative did not return a request for comment.
Baker grew up with his father, with whom he had a troubled relationship.
“I came from a father who was extremely religious and extremely strict, and I wasn’t even allowed to hold my pen the way I wanted to hold my pen,” Baker said. “That caused me to revolt completely and cut off communication completely, because I didn’t want any interface with him.”
Elizabeth Brandl, an Illinois schoolteacher who worked and remained friends with James Colson Baker, remembered him as “the perfect supervisor, with a smile that would turn off the sun.”
But the next day you ran into him and it was like he was crumbling, ”Brandl told The Post. ‘He had no confidence. He came from a small farming community and he could have gone this far. He was talking about marrying this wonderful girl. Then she left him and broke his heart. “
James, who had studied theology, became more religious after his wife left, Brandl said. He and his son clashed so badly that Baker often left the house, “hand in hand and living with friends,” she said.
Brandl said that James was upset about his son’s lifestyle, but “always loved him,” she said.
Baker was nicknamed Machine Gun Kelly for his fast-paced rap style and released his first mixtape in 2006. In 2009 he won an amateur night at Harlem’s Apollo – the first rapper to do so.
From there he was discovered by Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jimmy Iovine, who signed Baker to Interscope Records.
In 2011, Baker rose to prominence with a mixtape entitled “Lace Up,” which has become a movement among fans that means getting ready, showing up, no matter what. For Baker, that ethos started when he got older at the age of 18, when his high school girlfriend Emma gave birth to their daughter Casie – now 12, and her father’s frequent travel companion.
Fans online are rhapsodic about how Machine Gun Kelly’s songs about trying to overcome drug abuse – he talked about being addicted to Adderall – and sometimes suicidal despair has helped them.
Baker famously co-starred with Eminem in what many believe was a PR stunt that helped the younger rapper. In 2012, Baker tweeted that Eminem’s then 16-year-old daughter Hailie was “hot as fk”. In 2018, Eminem dropped a devastating diss track, “Not Alike.” Baker followed with his own response, “Rap Devil,” after which Eminem owned him with “Killshot.”
“MGK is pretty brilliant,” a music manager who has been observing him since his early days in Cleveland told The Post.
“He dreamed of making it big and he started getting there by becoming a rapper. He said who is the giant in this game? I’m going to poke that bear so many times until I get a response and I’m noticed. It worked. Eminem noticed and he responded … But I don’t think rap was [Baker’s] endgame. He is now living his real dream. The hot girlfriend, the acting career. He achieved his success using both psychology and his talent. “
Indeed, Baker has gone from playing a rapper in the 2014 movie ‘Beyond the Lights’ to roles on ‘Bird Box’, the Showtime series ‘Roadies’ and ‘Big Time Adolescence’ and ‘The King of Staten Island’ – the last two. movies with his good friend, Pete Davidson.
Despite the troubled relationship with his father, Baker tweeted when James fell ill in 2019, “I should have told him I loved him years ago. Breaks my heart that we’ve wasted all this time. After James passed away in July, Baker tweeted that he had “never felt pain so deep in my life.”
A few days before his SNL debut, Baker remembered his late father.
“I remember watching SNL every weekend as a kid with my aunt and my dad,” he tweeted. “Since they’re not here to see this moment, I’m going to perform the song I wrote for them on the show. Hopefully I can feel them there. “