The TV host said the process, which took nearly six hours to complete, was painful but well worth it.
Nick Cannon found a sweet, and permanent way, to pay tribute to his late son, Zen.
The 41-year-old TV host unveiled Friday on his eponymous talk show a new tattoo of Zen as an angel. Cannon made the revelation on his "Pic of the Day" segment.
"Bam, now you're looking at that and it looks like an interesting picture, but let me explain to you," he said. "Last night, I got the opportunity to get a tattoo of my son, Zen, as an angel on my rib. I'm still all bandaged up. It hurts right here right now."
Cannon said the entire process took nearly six hours to complete, beginning at around 7:30 p.m. Thursday night and finishing at around 1 a.m. The late outing prompted Cannon to joke that he still looked good despite the long process.
"It was a lot of pain but so well worth it," he added. "I enjoyed every moment of the experience to forever have my son right here on my rib, on my side. As my angel."
Cannon, who got the tattoo on the left side of his ribs, also showed an emotional video documenting the process from start to finish. He's seen wearing a suit as he walks into the tattoo shop. The tattoo artist then shows Cannon several renderings of what the tattoo could look like before going to work.
The tribute comes just days after Cannon stunned his studio audience on Tuesday after announcing on his show that his 5-month-old son had died of brain cancer and a subsequent tumor. Cannon and Alyssa Scott welcomed Zen back in June, making him Cannon's seventh child.
Cannon recently revealed he was "a little scared to share the information about Zen" for a couple of reasons.
"Initially, just because I knew it is difficult to keep it all together," he explained. "But then the thing that I still struggle with every day, is that I never want to feel exploited. I never want to feel like I'm using this as content. I'm definitely not a woe-is-me type of person. I'm usually a kind of guy that keeps it all in and I'm like, 'I'm good,' even though I'm not good."
Zen was diagnosed with with hydrocephalus, a "buildup of fluid in the cavities (ventricles) deep within the brain... [which] increases the size of the ventricles and puts pressure on the brain," according to the Mayo Clinic. Zen ultimately underwent brain surgery and had a shunt inserted to drain the fluid. Sadly, things took a turn for the worse on Thanksgiving, when "the tumor began to grow a lot faster."
As for Scott, she's been posting touching tributes to her son on Instagram. The latest post showed Zen sound asleep and comfortably wrapped in a blanket.
"These last 5 months we have been in this race together. We would hand the baton off to each other," she wrote in part. "You kept me going. It would be the middle of the night and you would smile at me. A surge of energy would fill my body and pure joy would radiate from within me. We were a team, both determined to see it through."
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