Otniel Pichardo, who's the owner of Atlanta Ink -- a tattoo and piercing studio in the ATL -- tells TMZ ... Drizzy's team called up their shop Friday night out of the blue and requested Otniel and the crew come to Drake's hotel in Buckhead, Atlanta for a personal session.

Apparently, the rapper's camp did a quick Google search of the best piercers in the area, and Atlanta Ink came up close to the top in the results. Talk about having a good rep!!!

Anyway, Otniel rolled out with his biz partner, CJ, and their best piercer, Christian, and they hit up Drake's hotel room ... where none other than Champagne Papi himself was waiting. We're told Drake wanted his ears pierced ... and naturally, was kinda nervous about it.

After talking him through it, Christian cleaned Drake's ear lobes and marked them with a sharpie. Then ... he stuck a needle through the left one first. No gun -- or numbing gel for that matter, 'cause Drake said he didn't want any. This was old school, baby.

We're told Drake then got the right one done as well, and slightly complained about the right ear hurting a bit more. By the end though, he was pleased with the results.

His own team had 2 diamond-studded earrings ready to go, which we're told was described as being worth $70k in total with 3 carats each. Drake got them in Atlanta. The piercer placed them in his newly pierced ears ... and he proudly rocked 'em the rest of the night.

Check out the before and after ... it's almost like he's a whole new guy, right?!?

BTW, Drake showed up to an event later in Jackson, MI ... where he was cohosting an OVO sponsored gig, showing off his new earrings for the whole world to see.

As for why Drizzy got this done at all, we're told he gave a pretty straight-forward reason to the fellas ... he recently got complimented by some ladies on set of a video shoot after they saw him wearing magnetic earrings, and figured it couldn't hurt to get them done for real.