Machine Gun Kelly has revealed that his dramatic opaque tattoo, which covered most of his upper body in a matter of weeks, put him on the brink of a medical emergency and left him unable to move parts of his body.
The 36-year-old musician, born Colson Baker, debuted the striking new look in a 2024 Instagram post, captioning it simply “for spiritual purposes only.”
But in a new interview with Billboard Canada Posted on June 8, MGK talked about the physical toll the expedited process took on him and why he went ahead with it anyway.
His tattoo artist ROXX had advised him to complete the blackout over the course of two years.
I had other ideas.
“She warned me that it was going to be almost impossible, even from a pain tolerance standpoint,” he said. “I said, ‘Yeah, we have two months.'”
The consequences were serious.
“After the first week, we hit my lymph nodes around my armpits and shoulders, and I got really sick,” he recalled.
“My skin was turning yellow. I couldn’t sleep. I stopped being able to move certain parts of my upper body.”
The decision to undergo such a dramatic physical transformation was, he explained, marking a turning point.
The ink covered not only his skin but also the extensive collection of tattoos he had amassed over the years, effectively erasing his former self.
“I was looking for a change that wasn’t just a sound wave,” he said. “It had to be something physical.”
He also addressed the experience on his track. Don’t let me gorapping about having “a nervous breakdown and I tattooed my whole body except one line.”
