Machine Gun Kelly wants to considered one of the top artists of 2020. MGK boasted about his credentials after Spotify’s Head of Urban Music Carl Chery declared Lil Baby, Roddy Ricch and Pop Smoke owned the year — regardless of genre.
“Then my #1 album, first week sales and breaking the genre box we as artist’s are put into will gladly jump in this conversation then,” MGK wrote in response. “as well as being the forefront of creating a format for quarantine videos and music which has been the entire 2020.”
then my #1 album
first week sales
and breaking the genre box we as artist’s are put into will gladly jump in this conversation then…as well as being the forefront of creating a format for quarantine videos and music
which has been the entire 2020.— Blonde Don (@machinegunkelly) October 28, 2020
Chery fired back, “Roddy’s album no.1 four weeks and ‘The Box’ is the biggest song of the year. Fact. Lil Baby no.1 for five weeks. Only double platinum album of the year. King of features. Pop debuted at no.1 and went back to no.1 three months later. Only a select few can be in that convo.”
MGK threw his hat into the ring after Chery mentioned “all genres of music.” Although Kelly’s been a Hip Hop artist for the majority of his career, he ventured into the realm of pop-punk on his new album Tickets To My Downfall.
Tickets To My Downfall debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard, becoming MGK’s first album to ever top the chart. And in light of his genre switch, the Interscope Records artist’s project marked the first rock LP to hit No. 1 since Tool’s Fear Inoculum in 2019.
But MGK’s album didn’t have a sustained run at No. 1 like the artists mentioned by Chery. In its second week, it fell out of the Top 5 as 21 Savage and Metro Boomin’s Savage Mode II claimed the Billboard crown. But to MGK’s credit, Tickets To My Downfall has spent its entire run in the Top 10 so far.
Check out MGK’s Travis Barker-produced project below.