The Drake Forehead Tattoo: The Ugly Truth Behind the Best/Worst Drake Story of 2011

I guess I had somehow convinced myself that last week’s viral photo of a young women with her eyebrows shaved off and a huge tattoo on her forehead that read “DRAKE” was just a horrible figment of my imagination. Or some cruel photoshop joke played by rival highschool cholas on facebook.

But NO! It’s so real. And thank you, Vice. And thank you Vice writer Kara-Lis Coverdalefor christiane-amanpouring this so that we could know what really happened at LA’s Will Rise tattoo shop….when this chick walked in with a mission.

Kevin Campbell tells Vice:

“She was really psyched about it. She had the shitty font all picked out on her iPhone ready to go and was pretty adamant about putting it on her forehead…When I printed up the first image of the lettering, she wanted me to go bigger…“

“My whole deal with people wanting completely outrageous and potentially life-ruining tattoos is this: I’ll ask them three times if they really think it’s a good idea, I tell them what the potential consequences of getting a tattoo on their face might be, and after that, the bad decision is on them. I believe that people get the tattoos that they deserve…
I guess I feel bad that this dumbass got the name of the softest motherfucker in hip-hop tattooed on her forehead. But what makes that any less valid of a tattoo to her?… I lost a little sleep over it that first night, wondering if I wanted to be known as the asshole who tattooed “DRAKE” on some crackhead’s forehead.“

(You can’t see me but I’m hyperventilating at this whole interview.)
More photos of this woman’s epic fail of all fails…
And more of Vice x Kevin Campbell’s awful/awesome commentary…

Kevin the Tattoo Artist was hilariously opinionated about this woman’s choice of rapper to tattoo:

“The funny thing is, I didn’t know who Drake was. I figured it was her hood or some shit, not some goofnugget R&B dude.“

And also aesthetically horrified:

“When it’s something as simple as lettering, I could have tried to steer her into a prettier font maybe, or a different location (obviously), but she was already set on this letterman jacket-style font.“

But it sounds like even this crazy kooky Drake-fan is having some tattoo-remorse:

“Sadly, she didn’t leave a number on her consent form, just her name. But she is supposed to be coming back to finish the tattoo once it heals (she only had enough money for the outline) and I could probably talk to her then. She was on a pretty good one when she came in, but I think by the time I finished she was coming down, because her attitude changed pretty drastically once the tattoo was finished.“

Meanwhile, someone get this guy Kevin on twitter…he’s awesome:

“I don’t particularly want this one tattoo to represent my whole body of work… I’ve actually done some way crazier facial tattoos recently, but was really careful not to blast the shit all over the internet. There are so many kids walking up and down Fairfax with ridiculous facial tattoos that I didn’t think too much about it before I did it. Plus, the whole shaved eyebrow thing usually means you just got put on to your neighborhood or whatever, so I figured she was just some crazy shermed-out cholla who was “down for her calle” or whatever.

In my opinion this whole world’s going to shit, and shit rolls downhill, so I might as well just jump in, hold my breath, and pray to God that there’s a nice big soft puddle of diarrhea for me to land in once everything hits the fan.“

I love him.