When Post Malone made his country music pivot a few years ago it wasn't the slightest bit insincere but it was commercially prudent. His fifth studio album bricked, failing to produce a top 10 single let alone another one of his many diamond certified hits. 2024's F-1 Trillion restored his commercial fortunes, with the Morgan Wallen featuring "I Had Some Help" heading straight to number one on the Hot 100. But it's that Morgan Wallen feature that gives the game up a bit. Post Malone needed a hit, it was not acceptable that he was suddenly a stranger to pop's upper echelon, drafting the unfathomably popular Morgan Wallen for a feature was something like the red state equivalent of ringing up kpop behemoths BTS when you haven't visited the penthouse in a while. So if mgk, the Cleveland based rapper-turnt-pop-punker, had made his own country pivot it wouldn't have surprised anybody. He hasn't seen the top 20 of the singles chart in six years, his most recent album, Lost Americana, may have got Bob Dylan on da track but it debuted at #4 and slid from view not long after. Nobody would blame him for calling up Jelly Roll (again) and trying to yeehaw his way back to relevance. Instead, he's saying fuck it and doing nu metal. And unlike country, there are no recent examples that suggest this is going to pay off for him.
Mainstream pop artists have been batting eyes at nu metal for years now but nobody has gone all the way and released a proper nu metal song. When Halsey drafted Amy Lee for a feature or Demi Lovato enlisted Mike Shinoda for production it manifested as pretty standard fare from both artists and neither set the world on fire. mgk's new Fred Durst featuring "FIX UR FACE," on the other hand, could not possibly be mistaken for any other genre. It is proudly nu metal and, as such, I respect it. I kinda like the song too.
When I initially argued for optimism on behalf of the then-imminent collab I was pretty sour on the snippets available, calling it "exactly the kind of nu-metal-by-numbers song I expected it to be." The final version doesn't defy this expectation by much but, one, I fucking love nu metal by numbers and, two, there is an excitement here that I didn't pick up on at first. My mind was opened up by this clip of mgk debuting "FIX UR FACE" at a concert in Perth, Australia. He is just so fucking amped to be doing nu metal. He's so excited that he calls on the crowd to both 'get the fuck up' and 'get the fuck down' with only two minutes worth of song to support these contradicting instructions. As a midwestern raised, self proclaimed wild boy, born in 1990 with the first name 'Colson', nu metal is even more native to mgk's being than pop punk is. Lest we forget this is someone who did an admirably good job performing "Papercut" with Linkin Park at their 2017 Chester Bennington tribute concert (his less admirable jobs, I'm still trying to forget).
How could I possibly criticize this song without sounding like a massive hypocrite? Is the rapping lame? Are the lyrics corny? Have you heard literally any other nu metal song ever made?? Are we going to condemn this while also arguing on behalf of "Nookie"? I'll leave the harsh words to the other critics, personally when mgk says "rock's not dead long as I'm alive" I want to believe him. He's going all in on a genre that hasn't seen a shimmer of real chart success in decades. Sure, legacy acts like Linkin Park and Deftones can go top 10 but those are our genre's more 'respectable' bands and both have a long history of forsaking nu metal many times over. The kind of gonzo, balls out, break-your-fucking-face-tonight nu metal that Limp Bizkit pioneered hasn't worked out commercially for any band that isn't them. He's taking a real risk here and I hope it pays off.
It's bizarre that nu metal fans would be looking to slaughter mgk for his various cultural transgressions as if we are not nu metal fans. Any offense you can convict mgk of, Limp Bizkit has already been tried for the same crime twice. mgk's problematic, Fred Durst's problematic. mgk's been dissed by Eminem, Fred Durst's been dissed by Eminem. mgk's a bad rapper, a culture vulture, a counterfeit? Has Limp Bizkit not weathered these slings and arrows many times over on a far larger scale? That said if it is bizarre it's not surprising. Fred Durst was something like the original ragebaiter, pissing people off so they'd do the marketing for him. But if that meant blowing boats up on MTV 26-odd years ago, today that means just existing. Already I'm watching this song spread itself through the infuriated quote tweet, boosted by the angry reply. mgk knowing that anything he released would be subject to this kind of scrutiny is what makes teaming up with Fred Durst, a guy that opened his band's breakthrough album with "you wanted the worst, you got the worst," such a canny move. Oh, you think mgk sucks? Wait till you hear him on a track with someone who really sucks.
