Slipknot’s Corey Taylor Explains Beef With Machine Gun Kelly: ‘The Truth Is He Started It’

Slipknot‘s Corey Taylor was ready to clear the air about his beef with rapper-turned-rocker Machine Gun Kelly during a set on the recent ShipRocked cruise. In a Q&A with fans at the event, Taylor dug deep into the back-and-forth between himself and MGK, which erupted in September when Machine Gun Kelly appeared to mock the masked metal rockers during his set at the Riot Fest in Chicago.

In a video uploaded from the Jan. 22-27 ShipRocked event, Taylor told the crowd, “For those of you that don’t know, MGK doesn’t like me very much. And let me follow that up by saying I don’t care,” he said in a clip. “I won’t fill you in on the whole f—king story because you can go online and look it all up. However, I will say this: He maintains that I started it. The truth is he started it. Now, I will explain to you why.”

Taylor then explained again that MGK’s team asked him to collaborate on a song for the rapper’s Tickets to My Downfall album, and when they sent him the track, “I didn’t dig it.” The rocker said he “tried to do something” with the song because of his respect for MGK’s frequent collaborator — Blink-182 drummer-producer Travis Barker — but in the end, he couldn’t deal with the “really weird notes” the rapper’s team sent him and a request that Taylor sing Machine Gun’s lyrics.

“And I just said, ‘I’m not gonna do it.’ And I sent an email. I posted that email. And I didn’t hear back from him. And I thought it was done,” Taylor said. “Fast forward about eight months, and Machine Gun Kelly is doing this weird Instagram Live interview with Allie from Spotify. And he goes off on this f—king rant about rock stars and comfortable shoes. It sounds as smart as you think it is. … I mean, spit was coming out of his face.”

As the crowd laughed at Taylor’s rock ‘n’ roll standup rundown of the communication breakdown, the singer got to the meat of his ire with MGK.

“And I’m watching it and I’m going, ‘You f–k. You’ve been here for five minutes, basically, and you’re gonna f–king run your mouth about bands that have been doing this for 20 f–king years, like in the mud, in the dirt,” Taylor said of his band’s quarter century of bone-crunching metal mayhem. “They’re gonna wear whatever the f–k they want. You’re gonna walk in here with your f–king black tongue and try to talk some s–t on some bands that would f–king circle your a–? F–k you.’ So when I had my opportunity to say something, I did.”

What Taylor did was make a comment about artists who jump from genre to genre, which came just before both acts played at roughly the same time at Riot Fest. The man behind the Smiling Skull mask also noted that Slipknot’s audience that day included “a lot” of fans.

“But he, to this day, maintains that I started it,” Taylor said. “It’s, like, the only reason I said what I said is because he said what he said. You don’t get to walk into a genre with the history, with the work … The fact that this genre really doesn’t get the f–king respect that it deserves. You don’t get to walk in as some weird substitute teacher and pretend that you can tell us what to wear – boots, shoes, house f–king shoes, slippers … And these are bands that maybe I don’t even f–king know, but guess what? I f–king respect them because they get on f–king stage and they f–king give every f–king thing they’ve got.”

At press time, it did not appear that MGK had responded to Taylor’s update on the beef on his social feeds.

Watch Taylor’s video below.