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Machine Gun Kelly's Life in Pink

Nothing gets music critics hot and bothered like reinvention. Bowie, Madonna, Kanye, name the artist and you’ll find platitudes about their fearless creative genius, as evidenced by their ability to make themselves anew. It only seems to matter, however, if you’re already a press darling working in genres which pass their aesthetic litmus test. If you’re Machine Gun Kelly, say, and make the transition from middle of the road Midwestern rapper to star-fucking pop punk revivalist, the reception is more lukewarm. Since strapping on a guitar and refashioning himself as a rocker he’s been met with public hostility and critical disdain, alongside platinum record sales and sold out concert venues.

The new Hulu documentary Machine Gun Kelly’s Life in Pink documents the rapper’s metamorphosis and its personal toll. Like other recent rock docs by artists still in the middle of their careers not the end, it is part-puff piece, part-therapy session, and part-marketing tool for their latest album. Released in June, it comes on the heels of Mainstream Sellout, his sixth long player issued in March. The film begins with a montage of Kelly being alternatively praised and pilloried by celebs and Internet trolls. “You don’t know shit though about what the fuck I go through and what this is like,” he says like a wounded teenage boy that’s just been grounded for smoking weed. Sidenote: he also smokes a lot of weed.

Born Colson Baker, Kelly started his career in Cleveland, Ohio, as an MC before venturing into acting, most notably playing Tommy Lee in the 2019 Mötley Crüe bio-doc The Dirt. He claims the COVID-19 quarantine made him turn to guitar playing as an alternative to getting wasted all the time. He began posting videos of himself playing guitar on social media which resulted in hundreds and thousands of views and soon began collaborating with reality-television star and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, whose many extra-curricular activities included collaborations with rockers and rappers alike. The resulting album, 2020’s Tickets to My Downfall, was a smash hit and has sold over a million copies.

Kelly comes off earnest and well-intentioned. What he lacks in originality and intelligence, he makes up for with hard work. He explains much of his motivation comes from an unhappy family background that he shares scant details of besides attention grabbing headlines, such as the shotgun death of his grandfather, for which his pre-teen father was allegedly blamed. “Maybe I sabotage myself on purpose ‘cause I feel not worthy of being loved,” he says at one point. Later, while cruising around a venue after a sold out show, he says it’s “sad” and triggers his fears of “abandonment.” The self-pity gets annoying after a while, especially as we see him jet-set around the world cavorting with famous friends.

The center of Kelly’s emotional life are his daughter Cassie and his fiancé, the actress Megan Fox. While his daughter appears throughout the movie, defending or explaining her father with an impressive clarity of insight for someone so young, Fox merely smiles in the background and looks hot. Kelly pays lip service to wanting to be the best father he can be but the nature of his celebrity means he’s usually on the road. His relationship with Fox, in contrast, is obsessive. He describes her as being “like the sun” and says “the passion between us is otherworldly.” While I’m sure his devotion to them is real, the documentary treats them like props to show he cares about more than just money and fame.

Though Kelly had success prior to his emo-pop-punk makeover, Tickets to My Downfall made him a superstar. However, for every broken sales record and meme-generating public appearance, he was also met with hostility by those who felt he was a fake and a poser. In rock n’ roll, these are generally bad things to be thought of as. Wanting to prove, “You can’t get lucky twice,” he becomes obsessed with making sure the followup (what would become Mainstream Sellout) debuts at number one. When it does, he’s home alone, crestfallen about not being a better dad and alienating Fox and his friends with his quest for perfection. The film ends with him pledging to be a better man that puts family before fame. Hopefully, he succeeds.

Over the past year there have been myriad online discussions about the death of guitar driven rock and its modern irrelevance. The star-turn of Metallica’s 36-year-old song “Master of Puppets” in the Stranger Things Season 4 Finale and people arguing over Machine Gun Kelly’s rock bonafides would seem to counter that narrative. As a film, Machine Gun Kelly’s Life in Pink is too long and tries too hard to cast him as some sort of hero pop star who just wants to be loved. Watching it, however, you realize he’s no fake. If anything, Kelly’s rapper to rocker rebirth brings the genre crossing work of ‘Lil Peep and XXXTentacion full circle. Rappers have always wanted to party like a rock star, and today’s artists couldn’t care less about stylistic purity. It was only a matter of time before one ambitious MC traded in his microphone for an electric guitar.