Mister Cartoon shares stories about Tattooing Eminem and 50 Cent.
Mister Cartoon, the popular LA-based Tattoo & Graffiti artist recently sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe for a new interview. Mister Cartoon, real name Mark Machado, is responsible for giving body inks to the likes of Kobe Bryant, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Method Man, Eminem, Xzibit, DJ Premier, Travis Barker, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, Redman, and more. Machado also designed logos for Cypress Hill and Eminem’s Shady Records.
In the new interview, Mark was asked about his most memorable tattoos. “I probably have to keep going back to Eminem,” says Machado. “He went beyond anything that we ever expected. We knew he was dope, we hadn’t seen him at the beginning, but when I started tattooing him, I really seen him go out of control and be on the cover of Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly. Magazines that were, I don’t know, A-list celebrity magazines, you got this tattooed rapper on there.”
He continues, “And 50 Cent’s back, he used his back piece tattoo as his promotion for his album and his movie. So after then, I kind of didn’t need my portfolio. We used to lug around these big portfolios and show you pictures of my work, and then I can reference those guys. Made it a lot easier.”
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“50 wanted other tattoos,” he continues. “And he didn’t have anything on his back. I go, ‘I want to do the back piece.’ He goes, ‘I’m cool. I don’t want that right now.’ I go, ‘Okay when you’re ready, let me know what’s up.’ And he goes, ‘All right.’ Because I was tattooing Lloyd Banks or something and long story short, he left. I was like, damn, I could have tattooed 50 Cent. But he came back and he got that back piece.”
Mister Cartoon then recalled giving 50 Cent his iconic back tattoo. “Halfway through, he told me, ‘I got a meeting with Jimmy Iovine. I’ll be back.’ And I was like, I’ll be back and he split for like six hours. And you know his mixtapes were exploding on the streets so we waited and it’s a good thing cause he showed back up. But it’s those types of things that people don’t see, they just see his back on the cover. They don’t know he left through the session, everything that it took to get to that point, you know?”
Last year, a Netflix documentary called “LA Originals” on Mister Cartoon and photographer Estevan Oriol was released which reviewed the career of both as they transform their Chicano origins into gritty work that influenced street culture, hip hop, and more.
Toons recounts on his modest introduction into the art world in a conversation with Los Angeles. “ I started by stealing paint out of my old man’s garage, writing on my junior high’s walls,” he says. “My sister got me a job doing gang graffiti for movie studios. My mom would type up an invoice on a typewriter and they paid me.”
Mark Machado, sometimes known as Mister Cartoon, is a tattoo and graffiti artist from Los Angeles, California. Mister. Cartoon had known he was an artist since he was eight years old, and at the age of twelve, he got his first paid art work. Cartoon began airbrushing t-shirts and Lowrider automobiles as a child in the Harbor region of Los Angeles County before acquiring the famed “Fineline Style” tattoo art established in the California jail system.
Watch his interview below.
[VIA]
