6LACK Breaks Down His Tattoos

GQMagazine

"This was my moment of saying I don't really wanna be hired I just wanna do what I like." 6LACK breaks down all of his tattoos. From his "self-made" chest tattoo he got on spring break to the handful dedicated to his daughter, the rapper shares the stories behind his ink.  Director: Graham Corrigan Director of Photography: Oliver Lukacs Editor: Marcus Niehaus Guest: 6LACK Producer: Sam Dennis Senior Producer: Lizzy Halberstadt Line Producer: Jen Santos Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi Production Coordinator: Kariesha Kidd; Kevin Balash Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza Camera Operator: Nick Massey Sound Mixer: Kari Barber Production Assistant: Lauren Boucher Post Production Supervisor: Rachael Knight Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant Supervising Editor: Rob Lombardi Assistant Editor: Billy Ward

Transcript

00:00 What up, this is Black, and this is my tattoo tour.

00:03 [upbeat music]

00:06 The craziest thing is that my first tattoo

00:13 was absolutely during spring break.

00:16 It wasn't a crazy tattoo,

00:17 but it was definitely my first one.

00:18 This was college spring break.

00:20 I was at Valdoz Estate, stopped by a random tattoo shop,

00:23 and I didn't know what to get,

00:24 and the word self-made just popped up in my head,

00:27 and that was it.

00:28 Just some little cursive, just self-made,

00:30 keep it simple, nothing I'll regret later.

00:32 I always knew that I had a high interest in tattoos,

00:36 but I didn't get one when I was growing up

00:39 because I live with my mom,

00:40 and she was basically just like,

00:41 "If you live here, these are my rules,

00:43 "and when you go out there,

00:44 "you can do whatever you wanna do."

00:46 When I saw Wiz's full montage coming up

00:49 during the Flight School, Cushion Orange Juice,

00:52 How Fly era, I was like, "Oh, those are crazy tattoos."

00:55 And then Wayne, I think Wayne is an obvious,

00:58 from the beginning of time,

00:59 he had some very pivotal tattoos,

01:01 and tattoos that people can remember by photo shoot,

01:03 and remember by music video.

01:05 So, then besides that, I was always drawing and sketching.

01:07 I like to jot things down,

01:09 and eventually use them later on in life.

01:11 A good portion of my tattoos are either drawn by me,

01:14 or edited by me.

01:15 I'm not married to any one artist

01:17 as far as doing my tattoos.

01:18 There's a guy who goes by Ink by Kali,

01:21 from Atlanta, who I work with a lot.

01:23 Shout out to him.

01:24 He did this sound wave of the lead single

01:27 from the last album.

01:28 Since I have a lover,

01:30 he did the lover tat right there as well.

01:32 And then I have a Mamba tattoo,

01:34 like right on the back of my neck.

01:35 Homage to Kobe, my favorite athlete of all time.

01:38 My favorite basketball player.

01:39 My favorite mindset when it came to sports in general,

01:42 Mamba mentality was how I looked at my music.

01:44 When he passed, that was one of the first tattoos

01:46 that I got.

01:47 A little Mamba reference.

01:49 This is one of my most recent ones.

01:51 I got a lotus flower,

01:52 and I got Totoro, Studio Ghibli movies

01:55 are some of my favorite movies.

01:56 I got Gigi from Kiki's Delivery Service.

01:59 Those, I believe, are my most recent ones.

02:03 It'll always be my most favorite tattoo,

02:05 the bear claw,

02:06 'cause it is symbolic of the moment

02:08 when I knew I would dedicate the rest of my life

02:11 to what I love, which was my music.

02:13 It was saying,

02:13 "You might not be able to get a real job with this."

02:16 And this was back during the times

02:18 where tattoos were still very frowned upon.

02:20 It's just like, "Oh, you can't be visible.

02:22 You gotta be presentable.

02:24 You'll never get hired like that."

02:25 So this was my moment of saying,

02:26 "I don't really wanna be hired.

02:28 I just wanna do what I like."

02:29 I'm trying to think of most painful.

02:31 It's not necessarily the tattoos

02:33 that are the most painful.

02:35 It'll just be an area.

02:36 So anywhere near my wrist.

02:38 I have an enzo circle over here on the right side,

02:40 a zen circle,

02:41 and this part of the bear claw,

02:43 when it gets near that little bone in my wrist,

02:45 it starts to rattle,

02:46 and that's definitely painful.

02:48 Every other part of it,

02:49 I try and feel it as therapeutic,

02:52 and I close my eyes and listen to some music.

02:54 But when it gets right there,

02:55 that's when a single tear might fall out of my eye.

02:59 Most of these on this arm

03:01 have something to do with interconnection

03:03 or just my mind state.

03:05 So enzo, just kind of being my homage to imperfection

03:09 and finding the beauty in things that aren't complete.

03:11 And then that connects right into all these water symbols

03:14 that just recognize my birth chart and who I am, a cancer.

03:18 You have the seed of life right here,

03:20 which speaks to the genesis pattern

03:22 and just how things are created

03:24 and how everything ends up being connected.

03:26 Yeah, then a bunch of neighboring things

03:28 like the cancer constellation, more water symbols,

03:31 a little crab right there.

03:32 Yeah, this is my woke arm, I guess.

03:36 Then I got some dragons on this side,

03:38 and I just got that after I binged "Game of Thrones."

03:41 And I was just like, "Oh yeah, this is one of my shows

03:43 and gotta pay homage."

03:44 I love anything medieval, dragons, magic, kings, queens.

03:48 Longest of Hill might've been this faded black panther

03:51 that needs to be touched up.

03:52 This was also another one of my earliest ones.

03:54 Took the longest to heal because just of all the shading.

03:57 And there was a moment where I thought,

03:59 I'm like, "We have to be almost done at this point."

04:01 And I looked down and it was like this corner of it

04:04 shaded black, and I was just like, "What?"

04:06 I just find animals that I resonate with the most.

04:09 So during that time, black panthers or jaguars,

04:13 black bears, those were my two animals

04:16 that I pinged off of the most.

04:17 I love their stealth, I love their strength,

04:19 I love their tranquility.

04:21 When they're in their own element and undisturbed,

04:23 the panther and the bear both were just like monikers

04:26 that I took to the most and felt like I should pay homage to.

04:29 Bear claw, panther head.

04:32 Trying to think if I have any other like animals.

04:34 Oh yeah, I got a little bear right there walking.

04:36 That's just a geometric bear.

04:37 Feel like if you've been on Pinterest,

04:39 you've seen this one a bunch of times.

04:41 So Pinterest is good for inspiration.

04:42 Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

04:45 I have a few tattoos that are dedicated to my daughter

04:48 and dedicated to my favorite number.

04:50 I have Six's name on my hand.

04:52 I have a rose to represent her middle name.

04:55 Metatron's cube, which has six points in it,

04:57 but also speaks to this arm and the building blocks

05:00 of everything that we know and love physically

05:03 and what it all is made from.

05:04 Yeah, and then the number six, the digit,

05:06 I was just sketching on my iPad.

05:07 It looks a lot more detailed when you blow it up on the iPad

05:11 but for now it's cool.

05:12 I like it how it is.

05:13 I think I might've told my girl during the time,

05:15 but besides that, it wasn't like a premeditated,

05:18 I'm about to eventually get my face tatted type of thing.

05:22 My mom, you know, obviously was like,

05:23 "Oh, why you do that?

05:24 Why you mark up your face?"

05:26 But it's tiny, you know.

05:28 Barbara is my grandmother.

05:30 This was of all the grandparents that I have,

05:32 the one that I was the most closest to.

05:34 I remember a good portion of my childhood growing up

05:37 either around her or near her, or, you know,

05:40 having visits back and forth from Baltimore to Atlanta

05:43 and spending time with her.

05:44 After she passed, this was my tribute to her.

05:47 She was a very, very sweet lady.

05:49 Secrets.

05:51 Not necessarily a secret.

05:52 I have like a symbol just like that had no defining meaning.

05:57 I was just kind of making things again and I liked it

06:00 and I ended up getting it tattooed behind my ear,

06:02 but I never really know what it looks like.

06:05 And sometimes I could get like a little bit

06:06 of dry skin back there.

06:07 So it just kind of stays tucked away.

06:09 And every now and then somebody is like,

06:10 "Oh, is that a whatever?"

06:12 And I'm like, I honestly don't know

06:14 what it looks like back there.

06:15 I have no idea if it's cool or not,

06:16 but maybe one day I'll like put a mirror to it

06:18 and check it out.

06:19 I got one crescent moon on my finger right here.

06:22 I got one crescent moon right here,

06:24 along with all the water symbols and my cancer sign.

06:26 If I don't have any more, I'm pretty sure

06:29 I'll end up with at least a couple more.

06:31 Let me see if I missed any that I want to talk about.

06:33 Oh yeah, talk about it.

06:34 I have talk about it right here on my forearm.

06:36 I got this in the middle of tour.

06:38 For me, it was like during a time period

06:40 where I kept running into the issue of having things

06:44 that I was thinking about or feeling

06:45 and not necessarily communicating it.

06:47 And then later on it blows up in your face

06:49 and you're like, all I had to do was say this or do that.

06:53 And it would have completely changed the course of my day.

06:55 Sometimes I just have to like glance down

06:57 and give myself a simple reminder.

06:58 If I'm feeling it, if I'm thinking it, talk about it.

07:01 On the backs of my, like right above my

07:04 East Atlanta love letter acronym, that was free on tour.

07:08 And the free album, pre-six album is right there too.

07:11 So those are some of the cheapest ones.

07:14 Most expensive might've been the self-made one,

07:17 which is crazy 'cause it was my first tattoo.

07:19 I went to a random shop, they told me some price

07:21 and I was just like, cool, sounds good to me.

07:23 And when I say expensive too,

07:24 I feel like something might've cost me a little bit more,

07:27 but it's no reason why this should have been like $350

07:30 during that time.

07:31 Yeah, they got me, it's all good though.

07:33 Spring breaker.

07:35 Diamond in the rough was, it's kind of faded.

07:37 This is another one I need to get like touched up

07:39 and sharpened, but just a diamond right here.

07:41 The words in the rough are under it.

07:43 That to me just speaks to like what I feel

07:45 my process has been is my life could have been

07:48 a million different things.

07:49 I've been in a million different situations

07:50 that have nothing to do with like musicianship or stardom

07:54 or like having what you need to be in a place

07:57 where I have all the essentials and things that I need

07:59 and my people are good.

08:00 Diamond in the rough represents that.

08:02 This is zone six.

08:03 It's like a rib tat that goes down the side.

08:05 Zone six pays homage to the neighborhood that I grew up in.

08:08 It gave me a lot of inspiration,

08:11 whether it was music related,

08:12 whether it was just culture and how we dressed,

08:15 whether it was dialect, lingo, slang,

08:17 like that side of Atlanta was my stomping ground

08:21 for most, if not all of my life.

08:23 And even to this day, I still live on that side of town.

08:25 So zone six is, it's with me forever.

08:28 I got speed from my cousin who passed away.

08:31 His nickname was speed.

08:32 I got this one when Prince passed away.

08:34 This was just my tattoo paying homage to Prince.

08:37 There's a purple line running through the bottom of it.

08:39 I got this one in Atlanta.

08:40 Yeah, I guess I have a good amount of tattoos

08:43 that pay respects to people who are still here with us,

08:46 but here in spirit.

08:48 I got a compass because I'm weirdly obsessed

08:50 with knowing where I am at all times.

08:52 Directions and time and promptness,

08:55 and those are things that I just care about,

08:57 even though I was late today.

09:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

Category

Transcript

Recommended