MGK always goes big.

Remember when (or maybe not, if you’re Gen Z) you pulled out practically all of your butterfly clips trying to put together a Top 8 for your Myspace profile? Well, we brought it back — and instead of making it a list of ever-changing pre-teens, we made it career moments. And we can tell you now that Machine Gun Kelly was far too cool to pull his butterfly clips out over it.

We sat down with the “Bloody Valentine” singer and rapper on the set of his Nylon cover shoot (right before he got completely covered in paint), and he led us from the beginning of his career a decade ago at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, up to his MTV VMA win and Billboard No. 1 debut in 2020. Whether he’s on the biggest tour in the shortest amount of time, portraying a rockstar legend in a biopic, or putting his girlfriend, Megan Fox, in a music video that he paid for himself, MGK is doing the hard work to make his name big. And then he parties. Or sometimes he does it at the same time.