Machine Gun Kelly turned yellow after getting "really sick" due to his blackout tattoo.
The Lonely Road hitmaker debuted his dramatic body art back in 2024, but has now revealed it had a huge impact on his health after ignoring tattoo artist ROXX's advice to spend two years working on the look.
He told Billboard Canada: “She warned me that it was going to be near impossible, even from a pain tolerance standpoint. I said, ‘Yeah, we got two months.’
“After the first week, we hit my lymph nodes around my armpits and shoulders, and I got really sick.
"My skin was turning yellow. I wasn't able to sleep. I stopped being able to move certain parts of my upper body.”
The 36-year-old star - who has Casie, 16, with ex-partner Emma Cannon, and Saga, 15 months, with former girlfriend Megan Fox - was keen to mark a new chapter in his life with the inking, which covers the majority of his upper body.
He said: “I was looking for a change that wasn't just a sound wave. It had to be something physical.
"I saw death and drugs in all these patterns that I was literally writing on my body.
"There were happy tattoos, sad tattoos, holy tattoos, hellish tattoos. It was like my bipolarity was screaming off my skin.”
Despite his health struggles, MGK - whose real name is Colson Baker - pushed through the process and doesn't regret his decision because it left him "extremely inspired".
He said: “I came out the other side extremely inspired. Not just because of what I had done, but because of what I had to overcome.”
MGK recalled the sense of "shame" he felt when he was starting the tattoo and Megan was pregnant with their daughter.
He said: “At that time in my life, I was wearing a bunch of shame from personal mistakes I was making.
"I was dealing with sobriety really heavy, having itches that I didn't know how to scratch. I was losing myself in obsessiveness with work, instead of prioritising things that are actually much more important, which is family and self-worth that doesn't need to come from outside validation.”
