(ThyBlackMan.com) Tattoos are an ever increasingly visible form of artistic expression in the African-American community. Two of African-America’s cultural pillars are its love for sports and its love for music. African-American culture is a unique hodgepodge of its African and American components. On one hand, Africa’s history of extreme body mutilation including scarification for cosmetic purposes is extensive. The iconic plated-lips, stretched ear lobes and necks, and of course inking of the skin are all hallmarks of ancient African culture. On the other hand, America’s outlaw rebel culture bred large in the 1950s continues to provide the prototype of the modern day “bad boy”.
ESPN’s Fab Five documentary details the journey of five starting freshman college basketball players who nearly won the NCAA Championship in the first 
two years of their collegiate careers. That documentary highlights the emergence of the Fab Five as a turning point in American sports where the “bad boy” type became the more favored image amongst contemporary athletes. Allen Iverson and Mike Tyson immediately come to mind. These athletes belong to the Hip-Hop generation. They came up in a time when phrases like “keep it real” and “holdin’ it down” were popular. Their attitude was same attitude the rest of us had; F#*K the POLICE!
Hip-Hop had a tremendous influence on the athletes of that era as athletes and rappers were known to openly mingle with each making limited endeavors into the foray of the other. Many of the rappers and athletes were from the same neighborhood and had a great deal in common because of it. Most in common is the common heritage of being an African-American male. No art form could ever express the angst of the African-American male as Hip-Hop has done. Hip-Hop is a fatherless bastard of an art form. It is influenced by all of the world’s music, but none more heavily in America than the Rock ‘n Roll music.
Rock ‘n Roll culture in America is mainstream culture. The “bad boy” rocker image is an American staple. Tattoos are a huge part of the American bad-ass biker image. Hip-Hop’s sample happy nature sought to replicate and to update the classic All-American Bad Ass by converting it in to Hip-Hop form. Sean Combs was the first to really exploit this aesthetic with Jodeci and the tattoo was no small element in crafting that image.
Sleeving is a tattoo practice which covers a person’s arms as though the tattoos were the sleeve of a shirt. This kind of expression was once largely considered an off-limits for Hip-Hop and for African-American men at large; artists like Lil’ Wayne and Jim Jones display their sleeves like proud Maori Tribesmen. Today’s diverse America allows for young black men to have a Rock ‘n Roll attitude. Today’s America allows some breathing room for black men to be expressive within the culture. Black women are also feeling accepting and diverse as the recent popular Black Girls Rock campaign is further evidence of a young African-American population slightly more at ease with mainstream American culture than their predecessors.
Staff Writer; Darrick Herndon
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