When the news broke that mgk would be releasing a song with Fred Durst, the buzz was real. I can safely say that the staff Discord for this very Agenda was alight with opinions and bracing ourselves. While our CEO of nu metal Holiday Kirk has offered up his opinions in not one, but two different editorials, I wanted to turn the microphone to the rest of the operation and get their collective opinions. While it's for sure hard to say what the future will hold, if anything, for this partnership, it's at least given us and the music world at large something to talk about.
Lucia Z. Liner, Editor-in-Chief: Son of a bitch. He actually had a good one here.
While it does feel a bit too close to "Nookie" for my liking, MGK is onto something here. That bass riff is straight out of the nu metal heyday, and Kelly's flow is solid in the verses. While "rock's not dead 'long as I'm alive" is a hell of a claim, he's off to a hot start for this would-be nu metal era. This might be what "Ready to Go" was supposed to be for Limp Bizkit some fourteen years ago; that is, a fresh start, a return to form, and remembering what brought you to the dance in the first place. We'll see what comes next, but so far, color me impressed.
Drew Davis, Staff Writer: It is with a heavy heart that I must admit I fuck with this song.
It's a total throwback scientifically engineered to appeal to my base millennial instincts. The chorus, with guitar harmonics "censoring" the naughty bits, is how I know mgk, like myself, grew up with the edited version of Significant Other. Probably got it at Walmart, too. "Cursing but occasionally editing out words to give the illusion of danger" probably says more about mgk than was intended (i.e. he's basically harmless), but that riff gets the job done and then some.
While I was hoping for a full-on verse from Durst, I realize his role (behind the mic) is mainly to add flavor and attitude (he's basically nu metal Pharrell for all intents and purposes). If anything, it's the sound of the bass and guitars and the song's structure that bear Durst's stamp most strongly. Fuck a seven-string, that's some down-tuned six-string riffage. That heavy-ass bass makes the song. And that breakdown is vintage Bizkit. After several listens I still can't tell if the noise (a ring modulator?) buried in the left channel during the chorus helps or hurts. It's entirely possible you don't need six whole producers to match Terry Date. If nu metal is what it takes to drag mgk away from pop punk, so be it.
Charlotte King, Staff Writer: I’ll give him this and nothing more: mgk has made much worse songs. With that out of the way, “FIX UR FACE” is an embarrassing new installment in the seemingly never-ending spew of slop garbage mgk insists upon forcing into my ears.
Fred Durst’s inclusion is just insult added to injury. If you load up the song with hope in your heart that you might at least hear a decent Durst verse, I suggest you check it at the door; Fred is an occasional presence at best, popping up to deliver half of each chorus punctuated by characteristic exclamations of “Motherfucker!” and such, the latter being the best, most listenable aspect of the song.
The production behind the song is expectedly stock, biting off Bizkit classics the same way mgk bit from pop-punk legends during his era as a Travis Barker disciple and rewrote “Country Roads” in his infamous Jelly Roll collaboration. It goes up and down in all the right places to be recognizable as nu metal, but has none of the looseness or movement to make anyone want to bounce.
Worst of all, there are two mgk verses and each lyric is more ear-gratingly stupid, unoriginal and nonsensical than the last, and all delivered with the same flat, joyless drag we know too well from his “Aerials” cover catastrophe. “The only rare thing left is the New York strip” is a bbno$-quality lyric, an almost-joke that falls apart the moment it leaves his mouth.
On the chorus, anything remotely hard-hitting or explicit is cut off, presumably to be a cheeky ironic self-censor. All it does is illustrate how sanded-down and toothless mgk is, and that’s why nu metal doesn’t work for him. No matter where I am in the world, I’m not feelin’ this shit. Call me a hater (you’d be right) but I really hope this is Colson’s last stop in my genre.
Sam Owens, Staff Writer: I am getting real sick of MGK’s bullshit.
“FIX UR FACE” is a boring sterilization of nu metal. All the edge the genre is known for ripped right out, perfectly engineered for radio. ChatGPT’s Limp Bizkit, if you will. Bars are weak, with the humor of a 16 year old (“I’m all over your ass like cum drying” Gross, btw). Can you believe five whole people collaborated to write this song? FIVE. MGK’s flat and monotone deliveries turn grating on a chorus that’s meant to evoke the chants of “Nookie” and the like, but one of the many things MGK, and his four other ghostwriters (holy fuck), disregards about the material he’s ripping off is that those chants work because of the high energy of both the instrumentation and Durst’s vocal deliveries, which leads me into my biggest gripe with the track, the absolute WASTE of Fred Durst.
With him being advertised so much as the feature, you’d think Durst would get more to do, but he’s essentially just here to go “Yeah!” and say “Motherfucker” in the way only Fred Durst can. Throw a breakdown tease with no actual breakdown (it just goes back into the chorus, as if to say "whoops, we forgot") to pay it off in the mix and the result is “FIX UR FACE”, a mind-numbing attempt to cash in on the popularity of the genre. It has all the pieces to be baby's first alt track, but it’s not! MGK released a pop-punk album a few years back and he fucked that up too! This song feels engineered to get a rise out of people, and MGK is very good at that at this point. However, if you really want to piss people off, make a metalcore song. That’s where the real market is.
Stef Carrizales, Staff Writer: In 2014, I saw MGK open for Limp Bizkit (yes I’m old) and to be honest it was actually a pretty good fit. At the time MGK utilized a full band in his live sets, and it mixed well with his songs and stage presence. Honestly, I feel like this song should have came out around that time. Back then, Limp Bizkit had collaborated with Lil Wayne, so to keep the train going on those types of collaborations would have made sense.
Say what you want about MGK as a person, the dude really knows how to mix genres that make it work with his style, and again, I feel like him making rap-rock makes more sense than him making pop-punk, but god only knows what exactly his thought process is these days.
Unfortunately I feel like Fred Durst is extremely underutilized in this track, rather than give any type of full verse Durst is just doing his usual live mannerisms, which I guess is all you need for a Fred Durst feature these day. I'm curious if Kelly is going to keep this trend going in future releases. If so, my only hope is if he does then I feel like there needs to be a lot more heaviness to it.
