Rammellzee
Collaborated Project:
One of hip hop’s most enigmatic
figures, Rammellzee (b. 1960, New York, New York, U.S.; d. 2010, New York, New
York, U.S.) was a graffiti writer, rapper and sculptor. Born in Far Rockaway,
Queens, Rammellzee began a brief graffiti career on the A train in the mid-1970s
after meeting graffiti legend DONDI. By the early 1980s, he was creating
paintings and three-dimensional sculptures of letters, many of which were shown
in galleries and museums. Rammellzee viewed lettering as a form of weaponry and
believed graffiti could liberate the mystical power of the alphabet, a theory
he put forth in the manifestos “Ikonoklast Panzerism” and “Gothic Futurism.” As
a musician, Rammellzee had a nasal rap style, sometimes called “gangsta duck,”
that would prove influential to artists such as the Beastie Boys and Cypress
Hill. He appeared in Charlie Ahearn’s 1982 film Wild Style, and his 1983 song Beat
Bop—produced and with a cover design by Jean-Michel Basquiat—featured
prominently in Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant’s 1983 documentary Style Wars. A reclusive artist,
Rammellzee all but stopped exhibiting his work in public and spent much of the
last two decades of his life in the TriBeCa loft he called the “Battle Station,”
where he was rarely photographed without wearing one of his handmade, science
fiction–style masks. He died in 2010 at the age of 49 and his given name
remains a secret known only to his closest friends.