The 2020s File Feature
Ay!
Ay! by Machine Gun Kelly and Lil Wayne: Two Generations in the Same RoomMarch 2022. Machine Gun Kelly was in one of the stranger positions in recent pop-adja…
01 The Story
Ay! by Machine Gun Kelly and Lil Wayne: Two Generations in the Same Room
March 2022. Machine Gun Kelly was in one of the stranger positions in recent pop-adjacent history: a rapper who had pivoted loudly and publicly to pop-punk, watched that gamble pay off beyond any reasonable expectation, and was now releasing Mainstream Sellout, an album that leaned into the very criticism its title anticipated. Inviting Lil Wayne to appear on a track was simultaneously a look backward and a statement about credibility, a nod to the hip-hop roots he had left behind loudly enough for everyone to notice.
MGK's Unlikely Second Act
Colson Baker's original rap career had real momentum before he stepped on a controversy landmine in 2018 and spent the following years recalibrating. The pop-punk pivot, which would have seemed cynical from almost anyone else, actually suited his particular combination of aggression, melodrama, and genuine love for the guitar-driven music he had absorbed growing up. Tickets to My Downfall in 2020 had been a genuine moment, reaching number one on the Billboard 200 and introducing his music to an audience that would not have given his rap records a second listen. By 2022 he was one of the most commercially successful artists operating between rap and rock, and Mainstream Sellout was the confident follow-through.
Wayne's Guest Appearance
Lil Wayne requires very little context for anyone who has paid attention to hip-hop in the twenty-first century. He is one of the form's canonical artists: a New Orleans genius who spent the 2000s as arguably the most prolific and consistently inventive rapper alive, built an empire, mentored a generation of successors, and continued releasing material with the casual generosity of someone who has never struggled to fill a verse. His appearance on Ay! brought a specific kind of legitimacy that cannot be borrowed or purchased through other means; it has to be earned through the accumulated weight of the catalog behind the name.
The Sound of the Collaboration
The production on Ay! sits at the intersection of the two artists' worlds: harder-edged than pure pop-punk but not fully in the melodic trap territory that Wayne had occupied most successfully in his later career. The track moves with the energy of a party record that knows it is being watched, designed to feel effortless while containing enough craft to reward closer attention. MGK's delivery here is closer to his rap roots than much of Mainstream Sellout, which is presumably what made the collaboration possible; Wayne was not going to show up for something that did not let him actually rap.
The Chart Performance
Ay! debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on March 19, 2022, opening at number 82, then returning to the chart a few weeks later at 88 for a total of two charted weeks. The appearance of two separate non-consecutive chart weeks reflects the specific dynamics of album release cycles, as different tracks from Mainstream Sellout found their moments of fan engagement at slightly different times. The 29 million YouTube views accumulated since then speak to the track's staying power within MGK's fanbase and Wayne's broader audience alike.
Two Careers, One Track
For all its specific context, Ay! is ultimately a record about two skilled performers enjoying themselves in the same room, and that energy comes through clearly enough to make the listening experience its own justification.
The 2022 moment that produced this song was a particularly interesting one for genre boundaries in American pop music. Rock and rap had spent twenty years in a complicated relationship: collaborating, feuding, borrowing from each other with varying degrees of acknowledgment. MGK's full pivot to pop-punk had reignited that conversation, and the decision to bring in Wayne rather than a rock collaborator for Ay! was a signal that the separation between those worlds was ultimately artificial. Both artists understood that their music had always been about the same core impulses; they just expressed them through different sonic vocabularies. Cue it up and hear what happens when a genre-jumper and a rap legend decide, briefly, to meet in the middle.
“Ay!” — Machine Gun Kelly and Lil Wayne's singular moment on the 2020s charts.
02 Song Meaning
What Ay! by Machine Gun Kelly and Lil Wayne Is Really About
Not every song needs to be excavated for hidden depth, and Ay! is most honest when approached as what it is: a confident, celebratory record from two artists in self-consciously triumphant modes. The meaning lives on the surface, in the energy and the performances, rather than in layered subtext. That does not make it shallow; it makes it a different kind of achievement.
The Art of the Flex
Both Machine Gun Kelly and Lil Wayne have built significant portions of their careers on the ability to project absolute confidence through music, and Ay! is a concentrated exercise in that skill. The braggadocio here is not purely material, though it includes that; it is more fundamentally about creative self-belief, the sense that both artists occupy a position they have earned and intend to defend. MGK's flex carries the specific pride of someone who has been dismissed and come out ahead anyway; Wayne's carries the settled assurance of someone who does not need to convince anyone of anything at this point in history.
The Party as Form
Party records have a specific function in the popular music ecosystem: they create and sustain atmosphere at moments when atmosphere is the whole point. Ay! understands that function and leans into it without apology. The lyrics are optimized for maximum fun, for the feeling of being in a room where things are going right, for the energy of bodies in motion and voices in sync. Analyzing party music for its literary content is like reading a dance for its nutritional value: it misses the point of what is actually happening.
Wayne's Verse as Highlight
Within the track, Wayne's contribution is its own form of meaning. Watching a canonical rapper deploy his skills at high efficiency is a pleasure that goes beyond any individual line; it is the pleasure of craft made visible. His wordplay, his internal rhyme schemes, his easy movement between registers, these represent decades of practice crystallized into a verse. For listeners who came to Ay! through MGK, encountering that level of technical skill might prompt the discovery of an entire catalog.
Cross-Genre Energy
The broader significance of the collaboration is what it says about genre's declining power as a sorting mechanism. In 2022, the idea that a pop-punk artist and a hip-hop legend could occupy the same track without either compromising their identity was no longer surprising; it was simply how music worked. Ay! is evidence of that fluidity in action, a record that demonstrates the rewards of creative openness without needing to make the argument explicitly.
For listeners navigating their own genre loyalties, the song also served as a kind of permission slip. Fans who had followed Lil Wayne's career from the early 2000s and felt uncertain about the MGK pivot found something familiar in this collaboration; Wayne's presence was a reminder that the best music has always been less about category and more about quality. Fans who came in through Tickets to My Downfall and discovered Wayne through this track encountered one of the deepest rap catalogs of the twenty-first century. Both paths lead somewhere worth going, and Ay! is the junction that made both journeys possible.
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