Losing a loved one is tough. What’s also tough is finding a way, a great act or expression that tells the world how much your beloved meant to you. You can write speeches, paint walls and the like, but the significance isn’t the same; their memory and tribute is somewhere away from you, decaying or being buffed by the elements. So what do you do?
Well, if you’re Calvin Cordozar Broadus, better known as Snoop Dogg, you get a tattoo of your homie, Nate Dogg. Snoop unveiled the tattoo yesterday, several days after burying his friend who died from complications from multiple strokes.
Snoop’s act was indicative of how we live our lives in the 21st century, by referencing the past and making the ordinary extraordinary. Sure, our bodies will decay (it’s the only thing that’s certain in this life) but in the meantime, our friends, family and the strangers who lifted us up with their music and art will live on us, in us, as immortal ink.
See more tattoo tributes on the next pages.
Above: Snoop with his Nate Dogg tattoo.
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Megan Fox‘s Marilyn Monroe tattoo.
“I really admire Marilyn Monroe,” Fox has said, “but I would never try to emulate her. I got the tattoo as a warning. It warns me not to let myself be treated so badly by the film industry so that it breaks me down.”
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Eminem with his “Proof” tattoo. Slim Shady’s tattoo of his best friend’s name is in the exact spot where Proof had his. The rapper was killed in 2006 in a Detroit nightclub.
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A Kurt Cobain tattoo.
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A Tupac tattoo on a fan.
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A John Lennon “Imagine” tattoo on a fan.
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Lil Cease‘s Biggie Smalls tattoo.
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A Michael Jackson Tattoo.
