NEWSOK! Exclusive: Chris Brown Follows in Rihanna's Tattoo Trail
July 30 2009, Published 8:00 a.m. ET
On July 1, Rihanna made headlines when she decided she wanted to play tattoo artist and found three willing participants to let her illegally ink their skin. And now, her ex-boyfriend and one-time abuser Chris Brown has not only done the same thing — he's done it to one of the same people!
As OK! reported, on a whim while visiting New York's East Side Ink, Rihanna took a needle to tattoo artist Keith "Bang Bang" McCurdy, drawing an umbrella and an "R" — which Bang Bang had sketched — on his leg. On Tuesday night, Chris went one better by drawing his own motif and then inking it onto the veteran artist — who is now believed to be the only man to have a collection of celebrity tattoos.
After Bang Bang , the "No Air" star agreed to return the favor by putting a cartoon face on Bang Bang's leg with the word "Bang" above it. "He drew it," Bang Bang told OK!, "It's pretty funny. I told him, 'Do whatever you want', and he drew something and I liked it. "He did a great job too. He's a natural, which is funny because I said the same thing about Rihanna. She was really good the first time, but he was better."
Want OK! each day? Sign up here!
"He wasn't nervous at all," says the artist. "I asked him if he was, and he said, 'Nope — not at all.'"
But the task required a little sleight of hand. When Rihanna inked him, Bang Bang got in a spot of trouble with the law for breaking a rule that says only licensed artists can tattoo people in New York State. So Chris and Bang Bang had to take a little trip out of state, where it's legal for anyone to use a needle as long as they're in a licensed parlor.
"We took a ride in a car to a different state so that he wouldn't get in trouble," said Bang Bang. "We drove for a couple of hours to do a five minute tattoo."
So was it worth all the trouble, and how does it feel to have the artwork of so many famous people indelibly etched on your body? "Awesome! I'm lucky. They're all really cool and I've got a couple of other famous people who are going to tattoo me soon," said Bang Bang. "I'd like to have all the celebrities I tattoo do a small tattoo on me. I think that would be really cool."
