With top-notch presenters, musicians and guests going through “Saturday Night Live” every week, it takes a lot to impress 30 Rock workers. But that’s exactly what Machine Gun Kelly – the rapper who became a rocker playing the show for the first time on January 30 – managed to do.
“There are not many people here [because of COVID]”Said an employee of 30 Rock,” and generally everyone is very blasé. But this guy caused quite a stir. “
In fact, few people are climbing higher this week than the ultra-tattooed Colson Baker – the real name of the 30-year-old star – who walked the catwalk for John Varvatos and could be a model if it weren’t for I’m busy with a No. 1 album ( “Tickets to My Downfall”, her fifth LP), a hot acting career and perhaps just putting a stone on her girlfriend Megan Fox’s engagement finger. As Page Six reported, the actress was seen in New York City on Thursday using a “huge diamond”.
Baker seemed at ease in Manhattan while paparazzi took pictures of him and Fox outside 30 Rock – where he is working this week with his close friend and “The Dirt” co-star Pete Davidson – but he may not be in a hurry to move. marry. Fox is still reportedly married to her 10-year-old husband, “90210” actor Brian Austin Green, with whom she shares three children, although she filed for divorce in November and said they split up a year earlier.
She met Baker, who uses her real name when she acts, 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 half-naked, and added the caption: “Painfully beautiful boy … My heart is yours.”
Green responded by posting a photo of his children, with the seemingly mocking caption “Painfully beautiful boys … My heart is yours”.
But Baker – who has been romantically linked to singers Halsey and Demi Lovato and Kanye West and Amber Rose – is not easily ashamed. This is a man who once had the pleasure of a porn star while doing a show.
Fox said of Baker on the podcast “Give them Lala” last year that she “knew immediately 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 level high enough that it can be divided into two different bodies at the same time. “
Having a Hollywood sex symbol fawning over him did not look like in the letters from Baker, who became famous around 2011 as Eminem Lite. As the Detroit rapper, he told a back story about a difficult life that inspired songs of vulnerability and depression, as well as challenge and ambition.
Most interviews with Baker say he was the son of missionaries who traveled the world when he was a little boy and later moved to Denver and then to the East Side of Cleveland, where he ended up in the ghetto.
But his real past is darker. His father, James Colson Baker, was a human resources executive at companies like Amoco, PepsiCo and Hewlett Packard during Baker’s childhood. James worked briefly in Cairo for Amoco, but his missionary work does not seem to have happened until Baker was in high school.
Baker’s mother, Sonia Kjos Waring, is an epidemiologist with a doctorate in veterinary entomology, but on the other hand, a mystery. Sources told the Post that she and Baker’s father lived in Texas around 1998 when Baker was 8 and they decided to liquidate all of their assets and go abroad as missionaries.
But at the airport, Baker’s mother refused to go and told her husband that she was leaving him for another man, whom she later married, a relative told the Post.
I don’t think rap was [Machine Gun Kelly’s] end of the game. He’s living his true dream now. The hot girlfriend, the acting career.
A music manager at Machine Gun Kelly
It is not clear whether Baker had any relationship with his mother after that. Calls and e-mails to his mother and stepfather went unanswered. Both her maternal uncle and a man from her maternal grandmother’s house hung up when the name “Colson Baker” was mentioned.
“I’m not interested,” they 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 wouldn’t let me hold my pen the way I wanted to,” said Baker. “It completely rebelled me and completely cut off communication, because I didn’t want to have any common ground with him.”
Elizabeth Brandl, a professor in Illinois who worked with James Colson Baker and remained friends with him, remembers him as “the perfect executive, with a smile that would put out the sun.
But then, the next day, you found him and it was like he was falling apart, ”Brandl told The Post. “He had zero self-confidence. He came from a small farming community and could have gone that far. He talked about marrying this fabulous girl. Then she left him and broke his heart. “
James, who studied theology, became more religious after his wife left, Brandl said. He and his son were in conflict so much that Baker used to leave home, “living hand in hand and with friends,” she said.
Brandl said James was upset about his son’s lifestyle, but “always loved him,” she said.
Earning the nickname Machine Gun Kelly for his fast rap style, Baker released his first mix tape in 2006. In 2009, he won the 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 hired Baker for Interscope Records.
In 2011, Baker gained prominence with the mixtape entitled “Lace Up” which has become, among fans, a movement that means to prepare, appear, whatever happens. For Baker, that spirit began when he became a father at the age of 18, when his high school sweetheart Emma gave birth to his daughter Casie – now 12, and his father’s frequent traveling companion.
Online fans rant about how Machine Gun Kelly’s songs about trying to overcome substance abuse – he talked about being addicted to Adderall – and sometimes suicidal despair helped them.
Baker became famous with Eminem in what many say was a public relations stunt that helped the younger rapper. In 2012, Baker tweeted that Eminem’s daughter, then 16 years old, Hailie was “hot as fuck”. In 2018, Eminem released a devastating cover-up, “Not Alike”. Baker followed up with his own response, “Rap Devil”, after Eminem bought it with “Killshot”.
“MGK is very bright,” said a music entrepreneur, who has been watching him since his early days in Cleveland, to The Post.
“He dreamed of making it big and started getting there as a rapper. He said, who is the giant in this game. I’m going to poke that bear so hard until I get a reaction and get noticed. It worked. Eminem noticed and reacted … But I don’t think the rap was [Baker’s] end of the game. He’s living his true dream now. The hot girlfriend, the acting career. He succeeded using psychology, as well as his talent. “
In fact, Baker went from being a rapper in the 2014 film “Beyond the Lights” to roles in “Bird Box”, the Showtime series “Roadies” and “Big Time Adolescence” and “The King of Staten Island” – the last two films with his close friend, Pete Davidson.
Despite the difficult relationship with his father, when James fell ill in 2019, Baker tweeted: “I should have told him that I loved him years ago. It breaks my heart that we lost all this time. “After James passed away in July, Baker tweeted that” I have never felt such deep pain in my life. “
A few days before his debut on SNL, Baker remembered his late father.
“I remember when I was a kid watching SNL every weekend with my aunt and dad,” he tweeted. “As they are not here to see this moment, I will present the song that I wrote for them, on the program. I hope to feel you there. “