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Rammellzee vs. K-Rob - Beat Bop (Beat Bop, Tartown, 1983)
I bought “Beat Bop” while on a family Christmas trip in 1983. I was 14. Having lost my parents to Macy’s, I escaped to a nearby record store (which may have been Rock & Soul) and blew my Christmas shopping money on 12 inches. A guy who kind of resembled the manager of the First Avenue club in Purple Rain (“What’s this one-song shit!“) recommended five records: “Fresh” by Fresh 3 MC’s, “Rock the House” by the B-Boys, “Death Mix” by Afrika Bambaataa, “Bad Times” by Capt Rapp (produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis), and “Beat Bop,” which was credited to Rammellzee Vs. K-Rob.
I’d never heard of a song being by something vs. someone. The conflicted verses. Many questions. Who was making with the freak-freak? Rodeo big duck? What’s a Rammellzee? Why is his pinky nail so long? Who’s driving this German tank?
In eighth grade, my asthmatic friend would recite all the jabberwocky of “Beat Bop,” occasionally hitting his inhaler while quacking around in his green Sergio Tacchini flip-flops. — Dave Tompkins remembering Rammellzee (How To Wreck A Nice Beach, 2010)
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![RAMMΣLLZΣΣ (1960-2010)
In 1985 he told me, “Rammellzee is a military function formation… I am ramming the knowledge to an elevation and I am understanding the knowledge behind the Zee. Since we are dealing with Roman letters, we have to go back to the day when the Romans were using the ram to break down doors. Our situation today is to break down a door of knowledge hidden behind society. We’re going to work our way around it instead of breaking it straight up. Whereas before you’d be trying to break through and you would be on the bottom of the pile. We’re talking about where graffiti originated, where hardcore war went down, with markers against markers and letters against letters. You think war is always shooting and beating everybody up, but no, we had the letters fight for us.” — Greg Tate (Rammellzee: The Ikonoklast Samurai, The Wire #242, 2004)
Rammellzee was a visual artist, graffiti writer, performance artist, hip hop musician, art theoretician and sculptor from New York. He was instrumental as one of the original hip hop artists from the NY area who introduced specific vocal styles which date back to the early 1980s. His influence can still be heard in contemporary artists such as the Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill. [1]
He was an eccentric, outsize figure almost never photographed without wearing one of the elaborate science-fiction inspired masks and costumes that he made along with the sculpture and paintings that became the mainstays of his career in later years. He fashioned himself as an urban philosopher, whose overarching theory, which he called Gothic Futurism, posited that graffiti writers were trying to liberate the mystical power of letters from the strictures of modern alphabetical standardization, and had inherited this mission in part from medieval monks. [2]
He was obsessed with the notion of sonic sound wars and the historical struggles between the “letter” and the “number.” Rammellzee fought chaos with chaos, creating his own strain of Afro-futurism, inhabiting a galaxy populated only by George Clinton, Sun Ra and Lee Perry. [3]
It remains unclear whether he was born 600 years too early or 600 years too late. We probably won’t know for another 60. But right now, it’s evident that no style was wilder than Rammellzee’s. [4]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_la0nip5YmJ1qdrib8o1_500.jpg)
RAMMΣLLZΣΣ (1960-2010)
In 1985 he told me, “Rammellzee is a military function formation… I am ramming the knowledge to an elevation and I am understanding the knowledge behind the Zee. Since we are dealing with Roman letters, we have to go back to the day when the Romans were using the ram to break down doors. Our situation today is to break down a door of knowledge hidden behind society. We’re going to work our way around it instead of breaking it straight up. Whereas before you’d be trying to break through and you would be on the bottom of the pile. We’re talking about where graffiti originated, where hardcore war went down, with markers against markers and letters against letters. You think war is always shooting and beating everybody up, but no, we had the letters fight for us.” — Greg Tate (Rammellzee: The Ikonoklast Samurai, The Wire #242, 2004)
Rammellzee was a visual artist, graffiti writer, performance artist, hip hop musician, art theoretician and sculptor from New York. He was instrumental as one of the original hip hop artists from the NY area who introduced specific vocal styles which date back to the early 1980s. His influence can still be heard in contemporary artists such as the Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill. [1]
He was an eccentric, outsize figure almost never photographed without wearing one of the elaborate science-fiction inspired masks and costumes that he made along with the sculpture and paintings that became the mainstays of his career in later years. He fashioned himself as an urban philosopher, whose overarching theory, which he called Gothic Futurism, posited that graffiti writers were trying to liberate the mystical power of letters from the strictures of modern alphabetical standardization, and had inherited this mission in part from medieval monks. [2]
He was obsessed with the notion of sonic sound wars and the historical struggles between the “letter” and the “number.” Rammellzee fought chaos with chaos, creating his own strain of Afro-futurism, inhabiting a galaxy populated only by George Clinton, Sun Ra and Lee Perry. [3]
It remains unclear whether he was born 600 years too early or 600 years too late. We probably won’t know for another 60. But right now, it’s evident that no style was wilder than Rammellzee’s. [4]
