A Scottish fan of rap superstar Eminem has set a new Guinness record for most tattoos of a single musician after getting 28 tattoos inspired by her idol inked on her body.

35-year-old Nikki Patterson got her first tattoo, a smiley face, when she was 18, and she has added dozens of them since then. Three years ago, she got her first portrait of Eminem, whose music she had adored ever since she heard “Stan” for the first time, and she kept adding to them. Today, out of the 52 tattoos on Nikki’s body, 28 of them are inspired by Eminem, and 16 of them are portraits of the musician.

Photo: Nikki Patterson/Instagram 

“I heard Stan when I was 14 and had never heard anything like that before, it blew me away,” Patterson recently told BBC. “The portraits began three years ago, and I loved everything about them. I adored them and had to get more. He’s been the one constant in my life, and I have seen him perform live.”

Up until 2017, the Eminem fan had just a few smaller tattoos of the rapper’s lyrics, and a discrete backwards “E”, but then she met tattoo artist David Corden, who inked her first Eminem portrait.

“That tattoo changed my life overnight,” Nikki told CNN. “I went from hating the skin I was in to loving it.”

Patterson ended up getting 15 more tattoos of her favorite musician, and during the pandemic lockdown she reached out to Guinness Records to see if her Eminem tattoos could secure her a mention in their famous record book. After a rigorous evidence checking process, she was confirmed as the person with the most tattoos of a single musician, 15.

Despite already having 28 Eminem-inspired tattoos inked on her arms, legs, chest and fingers, Nikki Patterson doesn’t intend on stopping anytime soon. She recently created a hashtag called #SignMeShady, because she intends to have the artist’s signature tattooed on her body.

“My Instagram has been aimed at getting his attention. I’m excited because I think the attention might lead to something, but I’ve also had a lot of horrible comments, which is hard,” the Eminem fan said. “They have a fascination with my love life because they can’t understand how another guy would want to be with me.”