The Best Rapper Of All Time Has Died

I just found out my all time favourite rapper has died at the super young age of 49.

The performer, the equation, RΑΜΜΣLLΖΣΣ

The Rammellzee started off tagging trains in the 70s right back at the very birth of hip hop.

Then he started rapping - He's in Wild Style freestyling and carrying a shotgun cos some guy he had beef with had threatened him (he took the piss out of gangsta rappers before they even existed).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz24D-UyZwE

A few years later him and K-Rob voiced on Beat Bop - a 10 minute dubbed out masterpiece produced by Basquiat and considered by many the first Trip Hop track

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I56Kkxh_os

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFFMzSRhmP8

Then he joined the Death Comet Crew and the made some fucking amazing shit. He was one of the rawest and roughest freestylers ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6mz3SgAAiY

Then he teamed up with and Bill Laswell and made the Gettovetts record

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W3wUSUqYbY

Then something very special happened.

He'd kept up the visual art the whole time, and at some point he decided that letters and numbers were alive, and engaged in an intergalactic war to decide the fate of semantics and meaning. Or something.

He built the letter racers that were fighting the war

and dressed himself in amazing suits of beautiful trash armour.

^ that's not a couple of sculptures, that's RAM-ELL-ZEE

He wrote a manifesto called Gothic Futurism that only he understood, he decided that he was an equation and not a person, and he lived in that character for the rest of his life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPnmyLaNvvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qeGClIiBEY

And when he rapped in the new equation persona it was the most mindbending rap ever rapped

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9BqHNAgxSA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKq7VpNQKx8

He was #1 on my artists to see before I die list. He left us way too soon. Gutted.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/07/rip-rammellzee-19602010.html

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/rammellzee-graffiti-artist-dies-at-49/

http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/4501/?pageno=4

Sad. R.I.P.

i'd never heard of him until this thread

i look forward to hearing his music now

rest in peace

this is awesome, thanks.

rip

†

  On 7/4/2010 at 1:23 PM, troon said:

†

I hope you aren't serious.

wha's wrong jam master j? ...

R.I.P. yo.

RIP

you make a very convincing case for his being the best

Never heard of him ( I like what I hear )

Time for some research .

R.I.P.

Didn't know about any of this crackpot loony shit he did later on, intriguing...

yeah... homeboy went off on some other level tangent sheeit! i didn't follow him closely throughout the years, but i was aware of him and history and his zany ways... kinda like a sun ra and ? & the Mysterians in terms of straight up trippyness!

Amazing post, analogue wings ! I always thought Rammellzee was the latest new hype from the Wire magazine and I just discover now, thanks to your post, that the man had history and cred. I didn't really like his latest stuff, but am gonna look into the oléd stuff now.

  On 7/4/2010 at 11:42 AM, analogue wings said:

He wrote a manifesto called Gothic Futurism that only he understood, he decided that he was an equation and not a person, and he lived in that character for the rest of his life.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPnmyLaNvvw

 

i remember i once saw that vid

i still don't know what he's talking about, i can only kinda figure out the first thing he said:

"The Rammellzee, rubbish ocean" = Zee means sea, ocean in dutch. Rammel means "rattle" in dutch, I think he confused it with rommel, wich means thrash, rubbish. And with it, he added an "L for 50%", whatever that means.

beat bop is one of the greatest tracks of all time

RIP

why haven't i heard of this guy before?

  On 7/4/2010 at 11:42 AM, analogue wings said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I56Kkxh_os

Best ever. Sad news.

hell yeah, I heard one of his tracks on Edan's facebook page (every few days he posts some obscure rap or hiphop song, one of which was that Beat Bop track)

Definitely gonna grab more of his music, RIP