Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan revealed their favourite rockstar masks and opened up about their various music feuds while going head-to-head on Hot Ones Versus.
The metal musicians appeared on the viral online show, which sees celebrities take on “hot questions and even hotter wings”. During the Q&A segment, Clown asked Taylor to rank three of his most notorious rockstar feuds with Limp Bizkit, Machine Gun Kelly and Nickelback.
“I love that this is coming up as I’m doing all this work on myself,” the frontman laughed before revealing his ranking.
The singer prefaced his answer by admitting that “a lot of the things that I said were based off of my own ego, my own insecurities, my own arrogance”.
Answering with that “ugly ego”, however, Limp Bizkit came out on top. “My issues truly weren’t even with Limp Bizkit, they were with Fred [Durst],” he explained. “It was just about what Fred represented at the time, the things that were being said and the people in the band that were actually saying stuff about us.”
In 2000, Taylor responded to the Limp Bizkit frontman allegedly calling Slipknot fans “a bunch of fat, ugly kids”. While appearing on Australian TV (per Metal Hammer), Taylor addressed the rumoured spat by suggest Slipknot fans probably enjoy Limp Bizkit too, saying: “So what you’re basically saying is that your fans are fat, ugly kids too?
MGK came out in the middle, with Taylor explaining: “Before the beef, I did have respect for him and I liked his music. We butted heads ego wise and creatively because of a song that he and Travis [Barker, Blink-182 drummer] invited me to be on. He and me are very similar and I hope he’s figuring shit out because I know he’s been through some dark shit.”
MGK said he had issues with Taylor dating back to when he was working on his 2020 album ‘Tickets To My Downfall’.
Taylor then responded to Kelly’s claims by sharing screenshots of a purported email exchange with Barker, who had executive produced the album and appeared to be communicating with Taylor on Kelly’s behalf.
Sharing the screenshots of the emails on Twitter, Taylor wrote: “I don’t like people airing private shit like a child. So this is all I’ll say: I didn’t do the track because I don’t like when people try to ‘write’ for me. I said NO to THEM. So without further ado…. #receipts.”
MGK also hit out at Taylor at Chicago’s Riot Fest, saying: “You wanna know what I’m really happy that I’m not doing? Being 50 years old wearing a fucking weird mask on a fucking stage, talking shit.”
The onstage diss came after Taylor appeared to dismissively allude to Kelly in a previous interview: “I hate all new rock for the most part. I [hate] the artists who failed in one genre and decided to go rock and I think he knows who he is.”
Machine Gun Kelly later admitted that he regretted the feud with Taylor.
In last place was Nickelback, who Taylor described as a “musical echo”, adding: “It’s just the same thing.” “There’s some stuff of theirs that I like,” Taylor added, singling out ‘How You Remind Me’, before Crahan erupted into laughter.
Elsewhere in the chat, one of the questions challenged the masked bandmates to score the masks of various other musicians – awarding Daft Punk four-and-a-half out of 10, Gwar a solid 10 and Marshmello receiving a measly zero, with Clown admitting it’s “not my thing”.
Clown even admitted at one point that Britney Spears is his favourite “pop princess”.
Taylor has been vocal in recent years about trying to better himself. Speaking to NME last year, he opened up about his solo track ‘Post Traumatic Blues’, which deals with his experience of PTSD. “It was one of those songs that I didn’t want to just be about me and my experiences – I wanted it to be a bridge between people who are dealing with PTSD and the people who are desperately trying to understand the nuances of what people have to go through,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Taylor recently revealed that he thinks Dave Grohl having a child outside of his marriage is “irresponsible”, but “does not mean he’s not a nice person”.