TW: Suicide
In his new Hulu documentary Life in Pink, Machine Gun Kelly opens up about a dark mental health episode he went through in 2020, which saw him put a loaded shotgun to his mouth while on the phone to fiancé Megan Fox. The powerful documentary, which aired last night (27 June), looks at the dramatic highs and lows that the rap artist has experienced during his time in the music industry.
The rapper has previously opened up about struggles with his mental health, but the shocking elevation about his attempted suicide is something previously unknown to the public.
Speaking to the camera, the musician – whose real name is Colson Baker – explains that he hit a low point after the death of his father: “I flew to my dad’s apartment to clear all this stuff out. I had this really weird interaction with this neighbour who told me all these things I didn’t want to hear.”
“That f**ked me up even more because I couldn’t get closure on it,” the 32-year-old said. “I wouldn’t leave my room and I started getting really, really, really dark.
MGK reveals that Megan had gone to Bulgaria to film for a movie and he began to experience “wild” paranoia: “Like I kept getting paranoid that someone was gonna come and kill me. I would always sleep with a shotgun next to my bed, and like, one of the days, I just f**king snapped.”
“I called Megan, I was like, ‘You aren’t here for me,'” the Papercuts singer continued. “I’m in my room and I’m like freaking out on her and dude, I put the shotgun in my mouth and I’m yelling on the phone and like the barrel’s in my mouth. I go to cock the shotgun and the bullet as it comes back up, the shell just gets jammed. Megan’s like dead silent.”
Though deeply upsetting, his thwarted suicide attempt led to the American star feeling forced to come to terms with the fact that something was “not right” with his mental health, and he now credits this realisation, along with the support of Megan and his 12-year-old daughter, as the catalyst for him to get help and move forward: “They simultaneously came at me with this like, ‘I want to like, be able to see in your eyes. I don’t want to like be talking to you through a veil anymore. I want to see you as my father and I want to see you as my husband-to-be’.”
“I was like, ‘I need to kick the drugs, for real this time.'”
He went on: “Megan became like the sun to me — like the one that I revolve around and gives me life and like helps me grow. It’s just like every fairytale that they never told you in school, that they never taught you. Like the passion between us is otherworldly. I know I’ve known her in so many other lifetimes.”
As well as his battle with mental health, viewers of the documentary get a first hand account of the Emo Girl hitmaker’s upbringing, the difficult relationship with his father, life with Megan Fox and a near-death experience with his daughter, where the pair had a gun pulled on them.
“I’ve been Machine Gun Kelly since I was 15,” he tells fans. “When you grow up and that’s the only name you have, you embody that person. Machine Gun Kelly was a gangster. He wasn’t a reverend. When you take on that moniker, you take on some of that energy.”
Life in Pink is now streaming on Hulu.
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