Machine Gun Kelly LIVE FREESTYLE on Westwood.mp4DjSkiLzZ

Richard Colson Baker was born on April 22, 1990, in Houston, Texas, to missionary parents. MGK and his family moved all around the globe and took up residence abroad from Egypt to Germany, as well as throughout the United States in Chicago, Denver, and Cleveland. He settled in Denver, along with his father after his mother had left home, and the pair moved in with MGK's aunt. Following his father suffering from depression and unemployment, MGK endured bullying from other children in the neighborhood. He started listening to rap in the sixth grade, when he attended Hamilton Middle School, a school with an ethnically diverse student body in Denver, Colorado. The first three rappers that got him into the genre of hip hop as a child were Ludacris, Eminem and DMX, with MGK gaining severe interest in the genre after listening to DMX's "We Right Here" from the album The Great Depression (2001).MGK's home life was seldom stable, as he would regularly fight with his father. When he attended Denver's Thomas Jefferson High School, his father moved to Kuwait to work for the army and left him behind to live in his aunt's basement. During the course of living in the basement, MGK began experimenting with drugs and recorded his first amateur demo tape, "Stamp of Approval".



Following his father's departure, MGK stopped attending school and began to make a name for himself by calling out elder classmates. In 2005, his father returned to take them both to Kuwait before the pair were forced back stateside of Cleveland, where MGK attended Shaker Heights High School.While attending Shaker Heights High, he convinced a local t-shirt shop owner to become his manager, as the shop owner would double as a MC manager. Given the stage name Machine Gun Kelly by his fans due to his rapid fire delivery, he released the mixtape Stamp of Approval (2006). The release of the mixtape allowed for his reputation and profile to grow, which allowed MGK to begin performing at local Cleveland venues.



In March 2009, while he was on the verge of getting evicted, MGK traveled to Harlem's Apollo Theater, where he had consecutive victories, making him the first ever rapper to win at the Apollo Theater. He records music in his home studio which he refers to as the "Rage Cage", and started to gain exposure when he was featured on MTV2's Sucker Free Freestyle, where he freestyled numerous verses from his "Chip off the Block" single. In February 2010, he released his second mixtape 100 Words and Running, where he derived his catchphrase, "Lace Up", which started as a mixtape interlude, before making it a prominent reference in his music. Despite relative modest success and rising popularity, MGK found himself working at Chipotle to afford rent, as well as being kicked out by his father after graduating high school. MGK soon also became a father.After he was kicked out, MGK had to move in with Slim Gudz and Dubo in his manager's mother's basement, where he wrote and recorded the majority of his first album.