Rapper Sleepy Is Getting His Tattoos Removed — for His Kids

Rapper Sleepy has begun laser tattoo removal, motivated by his children's preschool life and the sideways looks his ink attracts at drop-off.

In a video posted to his YouTube channel "It's Really Sleepy" on the 11th, titled "I'm a Dad Now… So Long, Hip-Hop Cool," Sleepy opened by saying, "My kids are going to daycare, so I thought maybe I should start getting my tattoos removed. As a parent, I get those pointed stares — 'look at that tattooed dad.'" He also noted that in a previous solo-parenting episode, a staff member had remarked that watching him pinky-swear with his daughter looked "weirdly out of place" because of the tattoos covering his hands.

Sleepy acknowledged the scale of the problem himself: "I have more tattoos than I realized. I have more than Jay Park. I was trying to win on tattoos — he's got short sleeves, I've got both arms."

"I'm embarrassed to go to daycare with these," he said. "Not embarrassed — ashamed. I'm showing my kids something that isn't good for them. I need to get to a point where the tattoos aren't visible under long sleeves, fast. I want to live a life that isn't shameful. Even with tattoos, I don't want to be someone my kids are ashamed of."

At the dermatology clinic, the consulting doctor asked whether he truly felt removal was necessary. Sleepy replied, "If I'd just done rap it would've been fine, but I've branched out — I do variety shows, I do trot now — and it just doesn't fit. Once you have kids, nobody says it to your face, but you start wondering on your own whether it's bad for their upbringing."

When Sleepy asked for a total cost estimate to remove all his tattoos, the figure was muted in editing. His reaction — "I'm going to end up broke" — suggested the number was substantial.

Sleepy married a non-celebrity wife eight years his junior in 2022. The couple have one son and one daughter.

Trot (트로트) is a Korean pop genre with older, mainstream-family demographics — a significant image shift from hip-hop, and one that makes visible tattoos a professional liability in ways rap does not.

tattoo removal; increasingly common among Korean entertainers who cross from underground hip-hop into mainstream broadcast careers