Mgk’s experience getting a blackout tattoo was not an easy one.
Speaking with Billboard Canada, the “bloody valentine” artist opens up about the health issues he faced while getting his entire upper body inked in black, which he first debuted in 2024.
“After the first week, we hit my lymph nodes around my armpits and shoulders, and I got really sick,” mgk says. “My skin was turning yellow. I wasn’t able to sleep. I stopped being able to move certain parts of my upper body.”
The complications stemmed from mgk’s desire to get the ink done in a much shorter time frame than the two years tattoo artist ROXX, who created the piece, said it would take.
“She warned me that it was going to be near impossible, even from a pain tolerance standpoint,” mgk says. “I said, ‘yeah, we got two months.'”
In persevering through the end of the piece, mgk says he “came out the other side extremely inspired.”
“Not just because of what I had done, but because of what I had to overcome,” he says.
Mgk is currently touring North America in support of his latest album, 2025’s lost americana. He’s since put out a new song called “FIX UR FACE” with Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst and an EP titled blog era boyz with Wiz Khalifa.
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