Machine Gun Kelly Shares Look at Painstaking Process Behind Blackout Tattoo

Machine Gun Kelly is giving an inside look into his bloody valentine tattoo process. 

Over a month after he debuted his new blackout ink—which covered a majority of the tattoos on his chest and arms, leaving only a few lines—the rapper (whose real name is Colson Baker) shared a video detailing the painful process. 

"i heard that they thought i went sleep for this...," he captioned the April 1 Instagram reel, which began with a clip of himself saying, "Today marks the day I start the physical change of my body. We'll see what this turns out to be."

From there, the video is interspersed with footage of the 33-year-old actually receiving the tattoo—which shows his skin bleeding in certain clips—alongside updates of where he is in the inking journey. The "Emo Girl" artist can also be seen in a hyperbaric chamber to, as he said, promote faster healing. 

"We've done about seven sessions," he said in one clip which shows one of his arms complete, as well as his chest. "It's been about two weeks since we started. this is the most painful s--t I've ever experienced in my life."

Though he only cited "spiritual purposes" for the reason behind his new ink when he first shared an image of the tattoo, Machine Gun Kelly further elaborated on its meaning in his new song "Don't Let Me Go," which came out earlier this year.  

"Just like I wish they would understand me one time," the Grammy nominee rapped. "I had a breakdown and tatted my entire body except one line."

For her part, Megan Fox—who got engaged to Machine Gun Kelly in January 2022—spoke to her fiancé's new ink during a recent appearance on Call Her Daddy. 

"He has a really special story behind why he did that, which obviously, I'll leave for him to tell," she shared during the March 20 episode. "But the relationship with the tattoos that he had was very conflicted emotionally, whatever they represented—and I don't actually know—but he didn't like to revisit those memories of some of the tattoos that he had and he wanted to get rid of them."

For more unique celebrity tattoos, keep reading. 

The Blink-182 drummer got a tattoo reading "Time Flies" in August 2023 after taking his 30th flight since surviving his 2008 plane crash.

In March 2023, the Twilight actor and his wife got matching tattoos honoring their wedding date.

After shaving off some of his hair, the Aquaman star revealed a new head tattoo in Sept. 2022 that he said has been "20 years in the making."

The Selling Sunset star debuted a face tattoo, which reads "invincible" in script and sits beneath her jawline, in April 2022.

The singer debuted a tattoo on the back of his neck in March 2022.

After filming Game of Thrones' final season, the actress added some symbolic ink to her tattoo collection in loving memory of her character, Arya Stark.

Forever MOD! The Game Of Thrones star permanently inked a dragon tattoo on her wrist after wrapping the final season of the show.

The former couple made their love a little more magical with matching Toy Story tattoos.