Rappers with tattoos are an all too familiar sight when it comes to hip hop. Tattoos at one point in time were associated with bikers and rock n roll, but now it seems as though rappers have embraced this trend to the fullest. The hippy movement of the 60's involving rock and drugs exploded the tattoo game as we know it. But how did they become so popular in hip hop and rap? Slain rappers like Tupac utilized tattoos to display and symbolize a "gangsta" lifestyle by having tattoos promoting "thug life" across his stomach.

If you turn on any TV set to watch rap videos or rap interviews you're promised to see a wide selection of tattoos on different rappers. Even though tattoos appeal to a diverse range of people from upstanding business successors to low life criminals, the trend of body art may soon be going out of style. It's like every time a rapper comes back with a new album, he/she has a new set of tattoos to show. Image usually means everything if you're promoting an album or just in general if you're a celebrity, but do tattoos really make you appear hardcore or "gangsta"? The answer is no, but more and more young people contend that it does. It happens to often that young people go into the tattoo shop and decide to get tattoos that they've seen on their favorite artist. They strongly believe that because the tattoo looks good on the artist that it would look the same on them, wrong. If the point of tattoos is to make a person feel "gangsta", then they are poorly misguided in the wrong direction. Long before tattoos were a trend, people actually got tattoos that meant something to them, not to just mimic. The expression "monkey see, money do" comes to mind every time I see someone with a tattoo that a rap artist has.

Tattoos have become so popular that even R&B artist get tattoos now to give off a "bad boy" image. No longer is singing good enough, everybody wants to be a "thug" now so to say. There are hardly any rappers in the Billboard top 100 that don't have tattoos. Coincidence, I think not, it's apparent that tattoos and "thug life" go hand and hand when it comes to succeeding in the rap industry. Take artist such as Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne, 50 cent, Paul Wall and even P. Diddy, all of them have tattoos and are very successful. Many consumers seem to be fooled into thinking that tattoo's make an artist "gangsta". The rap term "gangsta" means a hardcore, rough, street credible person that lived/lives the drug-game poverty stricken lifestyle and 50% of rap artist don't live it. What's "gangsta" is being real to you and not following in the footsteps of others, that's "gangsta".

Will this trend stop or get worst? I think the trend of tattoos among rappers is just going to get worst. Every rapper seems to want to outdo the next artist when it comes to having a "flashy" appearance, tattoos are apart of that. Tattoos are an accessory to rappers just like platinum chains, stretch Lamborghinis and beautiful models so I don't expect the trend to stop anytime soon. Lloyd Banks said it best when he stated "Tattoos are like guns, everybody's got one!"