Blink-182’s Travis Barker has some choice words for people who criticize his marriage to Kourtney Kardashian.
“F--- you,” he said on The Joe Rogan Experience. “You know what I mean? Straight up, f--- you.”
Barker and Kardashian married in 2022 after years of close friendship. Barker, whose documentary Louder Than Fear dropped Thursday on Hulu, is a Grammy-nominated drummer whom The Guardian once called “the most influential person in music.” The prolific musician thinks the fact that his online trolls pick on his marriage is “the weirdest hate.”
“It’s not even really hate, but it’s just something they know,” Barker said. “They’re throwing darts from across the room at me, like ‘Oh, bro, he’s like a Kardashian now,’ or ‘He married a Kardashian.’ I’m like, ‘Motherf---er, that’s the most punk thing I could do, is marry a Kardashian and just say, ‘F--- you.’ You know what I mean? I clearly don’t give a f---.”
The backlash confuses him, especially because his marriage hasn’t changed his fundamental self. He’s continued to embrace his own fashion sense, which isn’t always in line with his wife’s.
“She’s my wife. She’s my soulmate, right? I love her to death,” Barker said, adding, “I’ve continued to be my own person. I’ve looked the same. I’ve worn the same Dickies pants, the same band shoes, had the same tattoos that stopped me from getting a real job since I was 16 years old.”
If he started dressing “lame” and removed his tattoos, he’d get it, he said. In fact, he hopes people would push back. He’d want people to “come for me, you know? Please,” he said.
But if people are criticizing him for being himself, he doesn’t care. That’s the nature of punk rock, he said: not “giving a f---.” It’s about a certain confidence, even more than it’s about music.
“You don’t care what anyone thinks,” he said. “As long as you’re going through this world. Yeah. You are who you are, and you’re not hurting anybody. That’s punk rock.”
