Review Summary: Suck it Macklemore
Fuck me mate. When I first heard him back in 2012, Richard Baker burst onto the scene with the erratic EP
Half Naked & Almost Famous. It was a mainstream affair Executively Produced by Sean Combs, but it had major appeal and catapulted MGK to his first studio album in
Lace Up. Like
Half Naked & Almost Famous,
Lace Up featured some serious lyrics alongside some radio friendly singles in
Invincible and others. We all thought it was simply the start of MGK's astronomical Hip-Hop career, but in an instant MGK died... and Machine Gun Kelly rose.
What prompted Baker's return to Machine Gun Kelly from MGK is beyond me, but his music dramatically changed as a result. He released the free album
Black Flag, a dramatic change in lyrical tone and production from his previous albums. Kels no longer kept up the mainstream appeal and replaced it with bare bones lyrics about his emotional, wild, ride-filled life. It was as if
Half Naked was Kels choosing to just get fucked up,
Lace Up was him completely shit-faced, and
Black Flag was him waking up after passing out. If all of that is true, then
General Admission is the motherfucking hangover.
General Admission is a much more experimental album, utilizing very singular beats that are not clouded and muffled together. I am surprised at how amazing it sounds despite it's general nudity compared to modern Hip-Hop albums which favor heavy instrumentation over lyrics. This makes itself really obvious in
Till I Die which relies on small keys and a continuous base as Kels unleashes fire and fury for the next three and a half minutes. Probably some of my favorite lyrics, however, comes from
A Little More:
a girl committed suicide after she was bullied at school
'cause some dudes told her she wasn't cool
but you would rather gossip about a famous person breaking the rules
i'm confused
Ouch; talk about damning social commentary. The excellence in this album can be attributed to many things, but really most of the credit belongs to Kels himself. He is emotional, serious, and blunt. The production is excellent, refraining from beating the pop-infused bush in favor of a more indie/experimental model a la
Magna Carta... Holy Grail and
To Pimp A Butterfly. MGK doesn't waste any time calling out the hypocrisy in modern media when it comes to fame. I must admit that whenever I hear sad Hip-Hop albums pushed out the mangina's central uterus for pity bucks I tend to just roll my eyes, (looking at you Macklemore); but
General Admission isn't about making you sad.
General Admission is about reminding us why even some of the saddest shit has silver linings. Kels doesn't hate his past despite the curve balls it threw at him. He remembers it fondly not just because of the people who made him what he is, but because of what he learned as a human being from those experiences. This can be seen in the long monologue at the end of
All Night Long, or even from
Make It Happen (Experiences May Differ).
Where other rappers are spending their time complaining about how guilty they are of being white, Machine Gun Kelly just doesn't give a fuck. He knows the life he had and that's all that matters. He isn't going to whine about how bad he had it, he is going to remind us that the real test of the human spirit is in getting the fuck back up and moving forward. It's not about "It Get's Better". In fact, if
General Admission teaches us anything, it's that it doesn't get better until we make the decision to make it better. We can't be helped by others if we choose not to help ourselves.
