Freddy Negrete Bio

Legendary tattoo artist Freddy Negrete is best known for his pioneering black-and-gray tattoo style, honed while serving time in the California State Prison system during a youth mired in abuse, gang life, and drug addiction. His “prison-style” designs eventually found their way out onto the streets of East LA and, in 1980, he created a piece that earned him a Tattoo Artist of the Year award. Freddy has been featured in the History Channel’s Marked series, in the documentary Tattoo Nation, on Spike TV’s Inkmaster as a guest judge, and in numerous print and online media. He has worked as a technical consultant and tattoo artist on over 30 Hollywood films including Batman, Blade, Con Air, Falling Down and Austin Powers. He currently works at The Shamrock Social Club on the Sunset Strip with his son, Isaiah and has been a volunteer counselor at the Beit T'Shuvah residential treatment center for almost 10 years. His memoir, Smile Now, Cry Later, cowritten with Steve Jones, was released in 2016.

Freddy Negrete Wiki:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_Negrete

Social:

Official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreddyNegreteSmileNowCryLater/

Instagram: freddy_negrete

Web: freddynegrete.com

 

Addiction Unlimited Podcast Full Transcript: 

Angela Pugh: 

Hey everybody, welcome to the Addiction Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, Angela Pugh, recording today from the beautiful Hollywood California and I want to say thank you to La Fuenta Hollywood Treatment Center for giving us a space to record. We appreciate that. You might hear some traffic noise in the background. We are in the heart of Hollywood so there's nothing we can do about the traffic.

Angela Pugh:

Today's guest, I'm so excited for you guys to hear a little bit of this story. It's so good. Freddy Negrete is joining us. Freddy's book is Smile Now, Cry Later: Guns, Gangs, and Tattoos-My Life in Black and Gray.

Angela Pugh:                   Freddy, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here with us.

Freddy Negrete:              Thank you for having me.

Angela Pugh:                   Absolutely. Tell us a little about you and what you do.

Freddy Negrete: 

You got that tattoo artist part right, but I'm actually best known for pioneering the style of tattoo called black and gray realism. It's has it's roots in Chicano, [Cholo 00:01:01], [Vario 00:01:01] scene of East LA in the 70s. That was my life. I was a Chicano gang member. We gave the world, khakis and pendletons and bandannas, graffiti and tattoos.

Angela Pugh:                   And tattoos, there you go.

Freddy Negrete:

I was born with art ability so ... and as a young Chicano, we had certain images that were really important to us like the clown girl and the Charo girl with the sombrero and the gun belt. Aztec imagery, religious Catholic images, crosses, roses, Jesus, Mary, things like that. And writing. Because we were very big on who you were and where we were from. And then spending most of my life in institutions, I developed my own style of art and then in prison learned how to tattoo with the homie tattoo machine in there. And when I got out, I started tattooing out of my apartment, meanwhile a tattoo shop opened up in East LA and found that everybody wanted tattoos, but they wanted their tattoos to look like they were done in prison. They wanted the Chicano style.

Angela Pugh:                   Right. You actually learned to tattoo in prison?

Freddy Negrete:              Yes.

Angela Pugh:                   Okay. What is the ... how do you tattoo? What is a tattoo gun like in prison?

Freddy Negrete: 

It's funny because the machine that they use most today is...