Skip to main content

"Who the hell is Drake?" asked numerous posters on music websites in December after a photo of a fan with the rapper's name tattooed on her forehead went viral.

Even the artist responsible for the tattoo, Kevin Campbell at Los Angeles's Will Rise, didn't know who Drake was. "I figured it was her hood ..., not some goofnugget R&B dude," he told Vice.com.

In a Dec. 22 radio interview, Canada's homegrown 'goofnugget R&B dude' fired back, putting the blame for the bold, block-lettered face tat on the artist's heavily inked shoulders. "You should lose your job and should never do tattoos again," said Drake, who doesn't have a face tattoo, but does have a face tattooed onto him ( an alleged portrait of the late singer Aaliyah).

So what makes the Drake tattoo so cringe-worthy? With full-sleeves becoming commonplace, the face has become the counterculture's final frontier. But what was shocking in 2003 on Mike Tyson is now laughable in 2011, thanks to Ed Helms' character in The Hangover Part II.

A recent item on theonion.com reported that high employment in America is linked to the increase in visible ink. "At the very least, tattoo your resume on your face," counselled the satirical news site.

Mr. Campbell agreed that this tattoo wasn't his finest work, adding that he asked the woman three times if she thought it was a good idea.

"I could have turned her away, and I'm already getting a ton of flack from other tattooers for this, but the way I see it, if she's got her little heart set on getting her forehead tattooed then she'll just keep on trying until somebody finally goes through with it," he told Vice.

"If I tattoo a huge 'BK' on a Crip or tattoo 'DRAKE' on some R&B-crazed girl's face, what's the difference?"

Do you think the tattoo artist should have refused to ink this girl's forehead?

Interact with The Globe