Credit: @machinegunkelly/Instagram
Machine Gun Kelly Reveals Terrifying Side Effect After Covering Body In Blacked Out Tattoo
Machine Gun Kelly has revealed one of the terrifying side effects he has experienced after covering much of his body with fully blacked out tattoos.
The musician, more commonly known as MGK, has been heavily covered in tattoos since being a teenager, but in 2024 he shocked fans when he revealed he had the majority of the upper half of his body covered in one enormous black tattoo.
The artwork, which covers most of his chest, shoulders, back, arms and stomach, was created by the well known blackwork tattoo artist Roxx
MGK unveiled the tattoo, which is believed to be one of the biggest celebrity blackout tattoos ever completed, in February 2024, in an Instagram picture which he captioned: “For spiritual purposes only.”
Why did MGK get a blackout tattoo?
Over the past couple of years, MGK has listed a few different reasons for making such a drastic change with his tattoos.
The main reason appears to be that he simply wanted a fresh start. Earlier this year, in an interview with Billboard Canada, the 36-year-old admitted that he’d started associating his old tattoos with painful periods of time in his past.
When looking at the previous artwork, he said: “I saw death and drugs in all these patterns that I was literally writing on my body.
“There were happy tattoos, sad tattoos, holy tattoos, hellish tattoos. It was like my bipolarity was screaming off my skin.”
He has also suggested he wanted to reinvent the human body as art, and rather than seeing the blackout tattoo as simply covering up the old tattoos, he was instead creating a new canvas.
While appearing on The Jennifer Hudson Show, he said he wanted to ‘redesign what human skin could look like.’
However, he offered up a very different explanation in his 2024 song Don’t Let Me Go, he rapped: “I had a breakdown and tatted my entire body except one line.”
Terrifying side effects of blackout tattoo
While MGK has said he doesn’t regret the decision to get his blackout tattoo, he has revealed a number of absolutely terrifying side effects that came with inking such a huge proportion of his body.
In the same interview with Billboard Canada, the father-of-two admitted he was unable to move properly, had issues with his sleep and even got ‘really sick’ during the time the tattoo was being done.
Roxx had told MGK that a piece that size would usually take around two years to complete, but the musician wanted to go ahead with it in just two months.
“She warned me that it was going to be near impossible, even from a pain tolerance standpoint,” he recalled, though he did not heed her warning, and went on to have the tattoo done on a near daily basis.
He quickly found out, however, just why taking breaks is so important, as he started experiencing horrendous side effects.
“After the first week, we hit my lymph nodes around my armpits and shoulders, and I got really sick,” MGK said.
“My skin was turning yellow. I wasn’t able to sleep. I stopped being able to move certain parts of my upper body.”
Most excruciating experience of his life
Speaking on Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast, he revealed: “There was a point where I felt like I was just dying,” admitting it was ‘the most excruciating thing’ he’d ever done in his life.
One of the reasons it was so painful was because MGK was already covered in so many tattoos, ‘so essentially you’re just tattooing over scar tissue.’
“There was a point on that table where I just was… I felt my body leave my body. Cause what can you do? You can’t stop. You have to finish the job,” he said.
“I just gave up and gave my body to the Gods and was just like. ‘All right, hit me’.”
Despite the agony, MGK said he was left feeling ‘extremely inspired’ by the experience, ‘not just because of what I had done, but because of what I had to overcome.’
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