From Bob Bannister Sent Wed, Oct 27th 1999, 07:33
From Bob Bannister Sent Wed, Oct 27th 1999, 07:33
Two weeks late for the party again - here's the thread: >From: "Michael Upton" <xxx.xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> >Subject: (idm) Ramelzee (was Re: Man Your Battlestations?) >Jason Tar wrote: >>BTW--Anyone able to tell me who RammEllZee is? One of the better rappers >>on the new Material disc, would love to know what else he's done. >If it's the same guy, he's been MCing since the 80s and is probably most famous for his track 'Beat Bop' with K Rob. It's a mix up >of 'The Message'-style social commentary clashing with K Rob's "I'm the White Rabbit" fruit loop gibbering. :) Also kinda notable for >masses of reverb being switched on and off the vocal track, so the rapping suddenly vanishes into a massive cavern for a while... >pretty cool. Ramelzee versus K-Rob, _Beat Bop_, 1983 (Tartown Record Co., TT001) - "Produced and directed by Jean Michel Basquiat" - (also featuring Esther Balint on violin, a worthwhile tangent I won't even go into now) Ramelzee (as he was known at the time, but you'll get your best AltaVista results with "rammellzee" - no capital letters - and I recommend the search) is a graffiti writer turned "fine" artist and a rapper who should have had more recognition (but maybe he should have made more records); He was part of the original 1982 package tour bringing the burgeoning hip-hop culture overseas and subsequent mid-80s "rap-sploitation" movie mini-trend exemplified by _Wild Style_ - the 12" is awesome - the production is adventurous for the time but a teeny bit clunky in retrospect - the vocals, meaning not only style but content, were unprecedented when it came out and still send chills up my spine - all the Sugar Hill/Enjoy/etc. stuff that had come before was (however radical it seemed on some levels) basically pretty friendly or sunny or upbeat - not sure quite how to phrase it, but it was basically "party music" - "Beat Bop" was a dose of harsh reality that was way pre-gangsta but seemed actually scary at the time - "The Message" comparisons are not off-base but they illustrate how the problem with pop culture is that the ham-fistedly obvious wins out over the obliquely weird and fucked-up every time, rendering the latter that much harder to find out about. Bob