Did you know MGK is the first rapper to win the competition at Apollo Theater? Not just once, but twice. This is an ameture placement for unknown artist in any category of music. Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world go for the gold each year. This gave him a backbone to take initiative to get out of the ghetto to be a voice of the people and became one of the most influential rappers of his time. MGK had a rough life as a child and young adult but with the help of DMX and Ludacris’ music he became a successful rapper. Richard Barker, also know as Machine Gun Kelly after the famous gangster for his rapid fire lyrics, moved a lot as a child (Rosie). He settled in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights for his teen years (Thomas). …show more content…
At the age of 9 Machine Gun Kelly’s mother walked out on him for drugs, thus he has never known her. During the time he was starting to become a successful artist, a polyp was found in his throat that stopped his career for half of a year. Being poor he couldn’t afford health insurance thus he cured himself by endless vocal exercises. (N.A.) There was no guarantee that this would cure him, infact he didn’t know that it even had a chance to. To survive MGK had to a lot of stuff. He was a drug dealer just to put some food on the table which led to stealing stuff from the store. (MGK). From his song “The Return” he says, “I had a polyp on my vocal chords left with a choice stop now or possibly lose my voice but I woke up every morning and recorded till my throat swelled shut coughed blood up after every show cause it hurt that much.” which tells us that he had a very slim chance to become a rapper but he pushed through and made it. (MGK). Machine Gun Kelly didn’t have odds on his side to become a successful artist. He said in his song “The Pledge”, “The streets raised me.” (MGK). As statistics show most people who are raised on the streets will most likely be there for the rest of their life, but as you see with MGK’s motivational lyrics he became what he never thought would