The evolution of reality television is a case study all its own, but partnered with a generation ruled by social media makes unscripted shows an untamable beast. While it is recognized that reality TV is a form of entertainment that thrusts everyday people into the spotlight, there are still fanbases that take those storylines to heart. For seven seasons, millions of viewers worldwide have tuned in to watch Black Ink Crew Chicago, led by Ryan Henry, and those fans have helped catapult the tattoo mogul and his 9Mag team to new heights. However, the ever-changing cast has also put some of their most contentious moments on display, making them targets for criticism, controversy, and viral takeovers.
Henry is familiar with passionate responses from strangers who have watched him face scandals over the years. Black Ink Crew Chicago is filled with drama as Henry has lost close friends, fired several employees, revamped 9Mag, and admitted to infidelities. It has caused him to be tacked with plenty of unfavorable labels, but he has taken it in stride now that personal growth and accountability are at the forefront of his daily life.
With the new season of Black Ink Crew Chicago premiering this evening (August 9), Ryan Henry caught up with us for an earnest conversation about learning from his previous disgraces. Success in fatherhood, business, and maturation seems to be his primary focus, and while he understands why he has often been in the crosshairs of vitriol, he is grateful for those who can see beyond the mistakes he's made in his past as they grow in maturity with him with each unfolding season.
Prior to his reality television and 9Mag fame, The Chi-Town native had a roster of celebrity clients that he told us he once tattooed out of his home, and on Black Ink Crew Chicago, we've seen people like Nicki Minaj, G Herbo, Erica Mena, King Louie, Krayzie Bone, and Diamond from Crime Mob come in for their turn in his shop's chair. While all of the personal drama makes for great ratings, Henry finds it important to represent Chicago to show the world that the Windy City is more than your misconceptions.
"I think 9Mag and Chicago go hand in hand. People around the world can see that. Like I said, I think the best part that we get from being on TV for so long is that people can relate to how genuine we are. That's the thing, we stand on being in Chicago," Henry told HNHH. "You know, there's the stigma from people outside of Chicago, what they think about Chicago. I'm from the same things that people have a stigma about, but I always wanted to show it's never just about that... We were able to find a way out of the streets and be Black business owners, be good fathers, and be friends. Being able to show that, and show that Chicago's strength, is very, very vivid."
Read through our comprehensive interview with Ryan Henry as he details what to expect from the upcoming season of Black Ink Crew Chicago, why people should exercise caution before stepping into unscripted television, how addressing mental health and wellness has changed his internal perspectives, why he purposefully steered clear of featuring too many of his celebrity clients on the show, and revisit a heartfelt memory that involves an impromptu visit from DMX that made for one of the most "meaningful" moments in 9Mag history.
This interview has been slightly edited for clarity.
HNHH: We're years deep into Black Ink Crew Chicago now, and it feels like everybody has kind of grown up with you. What can we expect from this season as compared to what we have seen from Ryan Henry and the whole crew before?
RYAN HENRY: Now that we are eight years in, that's a lot of time for people to see a lot of growth with you. I mean, I started when I was 28, I'm 36 now. So, just with that, I've grown as a father, I've grown as a friend—and definitely, most importantly, as a business person, but also as a man. In doing that, you know, showing so much of our personal life, you get to see a lot of changes, which every person goes through a lot from their 20s to 30s, or even just eight years of growth.
People see all of our faults from the beginning of being younger kids to being adults and the things that we have to go through, to make mistakes and then learn from them, especially in front of the world. This is kind of very volatile, but I think that in itself is something that people can appreciate. The reason why we've been able to have the support of people for so long is because so many of the things that we do deal with, even though they're on the forefront, are very relatable, and people understand that. I appreciate people just being able to support that, and then, mostly, having love from it and respect from it, of the growth that comes from the things that happen...because things are always gonna happen.
Also, something that seems like an important point is to highlight the many aspects of Chicago as a city. Many of you are natives, born and raised, and it seems that you shine a light on things that go on within the city beyond the stereotypes of, "Oh, it's violent." Are we going to see more of that as seasons progress?
Yeah, absolutely. I think 9Mag and Chicago go hand in hand. People around the world can see that. Like I said, I think the best part that we get from being on TV for so long is that people can relate to how genuine we are. That's the thing, we stand on being in Chicago, you know what I mean? The things we do, whether it be some things from a community outreach, or just even being in tune with everybody, from some of us being street guys, and then everything that's in between that.
You know, there's the stigma from people outside of Chicago, what they think about Chicago. I'm from the same things that people see and have a stigma about, but I always wanted to show it's never just that. It was always the lane of like, "Man, we from that, too," but we were able to find a way out of the streets and be Black business owners, be good fathers, and be friends. Being able to show that and show that Chicago's strength is very, very vivid. Everything that we do, and still being in tune with the city day in and day out, and everything that comes through and from here, I feel like that's the most prominent part of what represents 9Mag. You know, 9Mag and Chicago are kind of the same word.
I'm from the same things that people see and have a stigma about, but I always wanted to show it's never just that. It was always the lane of like, "Man, we from that, too," but we were able to find a way out of the streets and be Black business owners, be good fathers, and be friends. Being able to show that and show that Chicago's strength is very, very vivid. Everything that we do, and still being in tune with the city day in and day out, and everything that comes through and from here, I feel like that's the most prominent part of what represents 9Mag. You know, 9Mag and Chicago are kind of the same word.
Yeah, I can see that. I read an interview where you said that you never had any intention of being on television. It wasn't your intent to be some reality TV star, but now that you're here and we're eight years deep, I know that as social media grows, there are more people that are looking to have their reality fame or moment. What would you say to someone who wants to be a part of unscripted television? What advice would you give them?
I feel like it takes a certain type of person to want to be in the lane of fame and notoriety. I count it as a great blessing that a skill that I was blessed with—and characteristics that I was blessed with and that we were blessed with—to be able to just be genuine to each other, to be able to be supportive of each other, be able to come together and, you know, create something with hard work and let it be seen and let it be picked up and then explored by the world, just by us being us. There was a greater blessing in doing that, and then us taking on fame and stardom as the back end of it.
People ask me all the time, like, "Oh, man, I want to be on TV, how did you get in touch with the networks?" Man, we shut up and did the work and they called us. I don't think there's no other genuine way than doing it. People ask every day, "Can I be on the show? I want to be on the show, can I be on the show?" That doesn't matter, you know? It doesn't matter because if that's what your goal is, understanding that world and that realm, you can have your 15 seconds of fame, but it won't mean anything if you don't have something of substance, something of relatability that allows for people to connect with you and then want to stick with you and want to grow with you and want to see you or be connected to you more than just initially seeing you.
I can bring somebody on the show that can dunk from the three-point line, and it'd be amazing and do three backflips and doing this or that. Once that trick is over...well, it's over. It's a one-trick pony, and nobody will remember it. But being able to be ourselves and then have people from around the world see and respect and relate to, "Oh man, those Chicago people and that's what they do." I'm more inspired by people walking up to me on the street and instead of just, "Oh, hey, what's up, man, you from the show? Lemme get a picture," them saying like, "Hey, man, I appreciate how you look out for your people. I appreciate how you are a good friend to your brother that was going through a mental situation, how you stuck it out for your people that were going through something." You know what I mean? "How you're a father to your kids, how you put stuff aside for business."
All of those things mean more. Like I said, let it be a reward for your hard work, same way it would be with money or something else. Let that be a reward if your hard work, fruits of the labor as opposed to fishing for that [TV moment], because that won't last long.
Touching on that, dealing with mental health and mental wellness has been a focus of the show. I know you've talked about in other interviews, going to therapy, and why you decided to do that at that time. It's really important within the Black community, within the Hip Hop community, and especially among Black men that we start having those discussions. I just wanted you to talk a little bit about your growth within that process because we saw some of that unfold. Are we going to see more of that and those conversations? And just in real life, how has that been for you, as well?
Absolutely. I mean, we do come from the stigma of, you know, having to suppress the things that are supposed to be normalized with us, things we're supposed to be desensitized to. It's bottled up and then we feel like we have to deal with it on our own. As you become more of an adult—not just a man, but more of an adult—and understand, for me, that therapy allowed for me to have, more than anything, accountability. You know, an outlet and a lane for me to be more honest with myself with, initially, an unbiased opinion that will allow for me to hear things about myself that need to be said without it being biased from a friend or from yourself or what you're thinking, and then actually applying it, knowing that this is for a reason. Then, you can use those tools and those ways to start learning how to better yourself, and that's helped me tremendously.
For all my guys, I pushed for them, like, "Yo, man, you gotta get that out." Because we're bred to keep it in. We're bred to implode because of that. We were bred to become, by statistics, the angry Black man because of this, because of that, because of what we haven't uncovered, because of the things we have unresolved, because of the traumatic issues that we haven't dealt with, the unresolved problems that we have in our families that we grew up with.
Once you address it, you know, it's a release. It's a stepping stone to get you to the next point because it's answered questions. We walk through life with unanswered questions and feel like we got to answer them ourselves. When you get past that point of thinking, "Yo, I don't have the answer," and somebody else can help me find the answer. Once I have the answer, I can become a better person, I can find a better solution for so many different things. It's made me tremendously a better person, just because of that.
Having some of your controversial moments unfold on television, with millions of people watching and social media making them go viral—those clips, they're etched into reality forever—there have been emotional responses. How do you figure out what part of your life you want to share and what to respond to from the public? I know that that might have changed from the first season to where we are now, because both you as a person and your business have grown, but how do you define your boundaries?
I feel like what therapy has allowed me to do the most was grow as a person to become honest with myself first, something that in my younger life I wasn't able to do. That allowed for the things that are trips and falls or mishaps or mistakes that happen over time to be scrutinized so much more as opposed to if you were truthful about it to yourself first. If you’re truthful about it to yourself first, an outside opinion doesn't matter to you that much. If you're not, then you're voluntarily looking for the acceptance or the siding of most people, and everybody's not going to do that. Everybody's not going to agree with you. Everybody is going to feel a different type of way, especially now.
In the climate of social media, it's 10 times [worse]. You can put up one thing now—if you look on a blog post and they say, "Here's a baby," you're gonna have some people calling the baby ugly, some people calling the baby fat, some people calling the baby possibly slow, some people saying the baby was lucky for being born rich. There's gonna be so many opinions, and then when you are able to be honest with yourself first, it allows for you to not care so much about what those opinions are gonna be because people are gonna have them anyway.
When I was in many personal situations, being in the public and subjected to being slandered by so many people...that's gonna happen anyway. There's so many people going through the same exact thing, it's just not on the forefront. I mean, it's not on front page news and they're going through the same exact thing that you are, that you're getting scrutiny behind. It makes it easier for you to want to hope that it doesn't get worse so you start looking into what could be best. In doing that, you'll find the bad and it can internally rip you apart if you care that much about it. And if you're not learning from it, you know, everybody makes mistakes. If you're making repetitive mistakes because you're not learning from anything, then you are subjected to always being talked about and always having something attached to you. You'll never grow, and you'll never grow from what people saw you as in their life because you are still in their life.
If you the same way from season one to season eight, and that's how people always thought of you, it's like, "You didn't make the change." People might be there for the entertainment, but they also ain't dumb and they see change. You can literally see people say stuff about me and be like, "Man, I don't like him, but he said something real. He did something real, he true for that." You know what I mean? The real can always recognize the real in it, even if it's a little bit of a bad taste in your mouth. You can grow, you can be that, you're not always gonna be stuck where you are in that one mishap that everybody always has if you're not learning from it. If you're learning from it, then you know, it's in the past. Somebody's gonna hold on to it always. Somebody will look past Kim Kardashian being a mother and a billionaire and all these things and be talking about her sex tape still. So what?
I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about celebrities or Hip Hop artists you've highlighted on Black Ink Crew Chicago. There has been Nicki Minaj, Erica Mena, King Louie, G Herbo ...are we going to see more artists as seasons go forward that come in and support the business?
Moving forward, I think I might be more open to showing more artists or, you know, people of notoriety now. What I stuck to my guns on, from the beginning of the first season all the way through, was that I never wanted to exploit the fact that I had been a celebrity artist, that we were able to be celebrity artists, because, with the platform of reality TV, I never wanted people to feel like we weren't down for the culture of the regular person. That's what grew us and that's what grows us. I was tattooing celebrities in my house and I was tattooing in the hood.
When it came to television, I knew that people will be thinking that because you're on television, then you just leave everything that grew you behind and all you do is tattoo celebrities and stuff now. I purposely kept celebrities and people of notoriety off of the show for myself as much as I could because I didn't want the public and the people who grew us and helped grow us—the average person every day who comes get tattooed 100 times more than a celebrity, the people who still want to potentially be tattooed by us because those are what inspire us artistically—I wanted them not to feel slighted. Like, "Okay, they're at a hierarchy, now they can't mess with us anymore." No man, we were always about the people.
I never wanted to push them off or make them feel that way. Now that we've established that 9Mag and myself are about the art, catering to the client, respecting the clients, it's about being there for each other, then we can have some fun with it now. Start dibbling and dabbling more into it, because we do those. We do tattoo people of notoriety, it's just that I never wanted to exploit it. I wanted it to feel good as opposed to people feeling like, "You don't even tattoo regular people no more, you just only tattoo celebrities." No, we want you to know that we are here for you.
Are there any memorable stories of a rapper or artist that you've tattooed or worked with? Maybe a piece that you did that kind of stuck out or something of that nature?
I will say probably one of my most memorable interactions would be not me personally, but one of my fellow artists from the show Phor. He had called me up, probably about 11 o'clock at night, and I wasn't even at the shop. He was like, "Man, DMX in town, he wants a tattoo, bro. Come on, man, come open up a shop for me." To us, it's like, man, it's X. Right? I came, we opened up the shop, and then we got to see an idol of ours, you know what I mean, in person.
I didn't tattoo him but Phor tattooed him in my office. He brought all his people with him, and DMX was just such a genuine person. He just vibed with any and everybody and it's like, man, I know what it's like to tire of people and the admiration and things like that, at a certain point. For him to be 20, almost 30 years into this game of doing that, and him being so genuine with all these people that he don't know—he would walk around and shake everybody's hand. I do that in admiration of people like that, being genuine all the time and, you know, that love to stay genuine that much. He made you feel like he was at home, you know. We vibed, we kicked it, partied...and that was just on a late-night whim. But it was with an icon and a legend. I'm glad we got to do that before he passed. It was very meaningful to us.
I will say probably one of my most memorable interactions would be not me personally, but one of my fellow artists from the show Phor. He had called me up, probably about 11 o'clock at night, and I wasn't even at the shop. He was like, "Man, DMX in town, he wants a tattoo, bro. Come on, man, come open up a shop for me." To us, it's like, man, it's X. Right? I came, we opened up the shop, and then we got to see an idol of ours, you know what I mean, in person.
That's so good. It's crazy, when I talk to people or you just read about, you know, stories involving DMX, it's—
So many people say the same thing!
The same thing! He was one of the most consistent artists when it came to how he interacted with people. Okay, so this is my last question and I ask it to everyone. I kind of touched on it before that there are expectations from people that are celebrities, right? Someone such as yourself, the world sees you as something, the industry sees you as something else, everybody kind of has their perception and perspective of who you are based on what they've seen. So, when we remove the veil and illusion of celebrity, what is something about Ryan Henry as a person that doesn't always translate to the public that you wish people could see more of?
I think growing up in the city, growing up in the hood, I didn't always understand...it allowed for me to put it off, the fact that all people would consider me now, being in this position now, is that I've got some looks. Being in this position, people feel that all I am is some looks. For me, I grew up having to defend looking a certain way because I would be the first one picked on, I'd be the first one talked about. All the guys I grew up with, just because they don't look like me, because like I'm mixed and I got a different look, growing up, people always try to attribute to the looks—even when it comes to the show now, people talk about how I look, how I look, how I look.
For me, I couldn't care less. Always couldn't care less about it because it's like, man, I'm fun, I be acting a fool. I'm funny, I be clowning, I be joking. I'm a genuine person and I hate that people can only see that part from a certain value. So, that's why I appreciate so many people still supporting us, because, over time, they get to see past that. They get to see past the fact of what will initially be on a reality show on TV.
Some people would think, "All you got some looks." Man, I'm an artist, I'm a father, I'm a man of God, I'm a philanthropist to some people, I'm a therapist to some people, I'm a good friend, you know, I'm funny. That's mainly what I was saying, like, yeah, I'm funny, you know what I'm saying, I don't care about no looks! [laughs] But because it's so much of a stigma, they make it be to where it's like, that's all you have of value. Some people, that's all they got to bring to the table. Realistically, I don't care about it, and beyond that, know that some of us fellas don't like being objectified, also. You know, it ain't cool, especially if that's not what we're looking for. You know what I mean? It be downright disgusting sometimes. It's just like, man, do you see me at all? But it's all you just see.
I'm a good friend and I'm human. The same way a woman wouldn't like to be objectified. I hope that people—through so many different things that they'll see on television, on the internet, on social media—that they'll be able to see there are so many different parts to that person, that's just not the thing. They be cutting out when I'm acting a fool on the show because sometimes it doesn't fit the narrative when I got to be a boss, and they want me to seem meaner than I am. Man, y'all ain't see how I was just cracking jokes on all these fools! That's how I do, I be clowning.
That's what I hope: I hope for more people to see more of my internal and I hope that it's exuded through a lot of the episodes, through social media...if they can't see that, then hopefully when somebody gets to meet me, then they get to see and learn the real me, if anything.
I appreciate that a lot. That's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for your time!
Thank you. Nice book collection!
[Laughs] Oh, this is just the first part.
I can tell. [laughs]
The eighth season of Black Ink Crew Chicago premieres tonight, August 9 on VH1. Watch the supertrailer below.