Machine Gun Kelly has revealed that his dramatic blackout tattoo, which covered the majority of his upper body in a matter of weeks, sent him to 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 published on 8 June, MGK opened up about the physical toll the accelerated process took on him, and why he went through with it anyway.
His tattoo artist ROXX had advised him to complete the blackout over the course of two years.
He had other ideas.
“She warned me that it was going to be near impossible, even from a pain tolerance standpoint,” he said. “I said, ‘Yeah, we got two months.'”
The consequences were severe.
“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 wasn’t able to 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, about marking a turning point.
The ink covered not just skin but the extensive collection of tattoos he had accumulated over the years, effectively erasing his old 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 in his track Don’t Let Me Go, rapping about having “a breakdown and tatted my entire body except one line.”
