It’s post 9/11 and Giuliani had already finished gutting and renovating damn near the entire city into a playground for corporate real estate and snotty new residents from other states coming to claim the remnants that gentrification left behind.

Nocturnal activities were still there under the surface and by nocturnal animals. The thieves, the junkies, the drunk, the desperate, the horny, the lost, the abandoned, hookers, after-hours workers and the graffiti writers. Fuck Giuliani, Diblasio, Cuomo and all the like. The whole table is broken so, why bother trying to take a seat at it; start making your own. Seize your day. 

State Your Name is a 2005 graffiti film directed by OZ. Featuring footage and interviews with writers: Nov York, Noxer, Skuff, (R.I.P.) KEZ5, DG, KET, JA, QUEST, JEZ, GOUCH, KMS CRUE, RISK 9, SEN4 and more and more. Simplicity at its finest.

Keep your finger on that REWIND Button.

Rammellzee (stylized RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ, pronounced “Ram: Ell: Zee”; December 15, 1960 – June 28, 2010) was a visual artist, gothic futurist “graffiti writer”, painter, performance artist, art theoretician, sculptor and a hip hop musician from New York City, who has been cited as “instrumental in introducing elements of the avant-garde into hip-hop culture”. Since 2021, Rammellzee’s work is exclusively represented by Jeffrey Deitch.

Many of think of MF DOOM as the first man to don a mask and make an impact in HipHop but, that isn’t the case. Doom may have been the illest ‘Supervillain‘, and one of the greatest HipHop artists of all time, he wasn’t the first. That title may rest on the crown of Rammellzee.

As much of an iconoclast as he was a contributor to the culture of HipHop, Rammellzee started as a graffiti writer in the late 1970’s writing on the A trains but, became associated with the wild style writers of the East Village; using near illegible lettering, inspired by the gothic script of Medieval manuscripts. Running around NYC with the likes of Jean Michel Basquiat, Lee Quiñones, DONDI, OU3, doctor REVOLT, INK 76,  and others. He was a contributing factor in making what’s considered the most valuable (collectible) HipHop album of all time – “Beat Bop” with K-Rob and a cover by Basquiat. Beat Bop was featured in the graffiti documentary STYLE WARS. He would eventually record more albums and collaborate with Bill Laswell and William S. Burroughs.

He has stated that his name is derived from RAM plus M for Magnitude, Sigma (Σ) the first summation operator, first L – longitude, second L – latitude, Z – z-bar, Σ, Σ – summation.

• www.peoplepill.com/people/rammellzee

His signature style was Gothic Futurism. Gothic Futurism was his own brand and the embodiment of his art. Gothic Futurism summarized as the conflict between the symbolism of letters against the structures of the alphabet and mundane conceptions of language. He would perform wearing self-made masks either as himself or other characters representing the mathematical equation that is his name. When his graffiti style became more mainstream, he morphed the language by making the letter more mechanized, cybernetic, militarized with a new style he called , “Iconoclastic Panzer”. He unlike Churchill had visually weaponized the English language. Letter Racers was another version of “Iconoclast Panzer” where each letter was locked in a galactic battle against one another.

Rammellzee’s description of the Letter Racers is as follows:

“Humans…in the 14th Century the monks ornamented and illustrated the manuscripts of letters. In the 21st and 22nd century the letters of the alphabet through competition are now armamented for letter racing and galactic battles. This was made possible by a secret equation known as THE RAMM:ELL:ZEE.”

Rammellzee is celebrated in Big Audio Dynamite’s song, ‘Come On Every Beat Box’. In 2010 Buckethead released a tribute song called, ‘Rammellzee: Hero of the Abyss’. March 2021, DJ MUGGS (Cypress Hill) and Queens rapper FLEE LORD named their collaboration album after Rammellzee; who is a major influence on the album and features clips and footage of him in their long music video for the record on Muggs Soul Assassins youtube page.

Rammellzee has shown in galleries throughout New York City and Europe. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His live/work loft studio space on 46 Laight Street in the TriBeCa neighborhood, which he shared with his wife Carmela, was named Battlestation. It was a frequented by artists and art enthusiasts looking to absorb the energy of his costumes and artwork.  After 9/11, the building was sold in order to build luxury condos and this forced Rammellzzee and Carmela to move to a smaller place in Battery Park City, and relocate his 20 years worth of artwork into a storage unit. Some of this stored work was included in the 2011 art exhibition, Art in the Streets at Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. In May 2018, Red Bull Arts New York opened its exhibition RAMMΣLLZΣΣ: Racing for Thunder, billed in its press release as “the largest survey to date of one of the most influential yet overlooked artists of the 20th century.”

Rammellzee was married to Carmela Zagari Rammellzee. He died in New York City on June 28, 2010, at the age of 49, having suffered from the exposure to glue, paint fumes, resin and other toxins through his work and from liver problems. The official cause of death was listed as heart disease

The Brooklyn born child of a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father, what better chemistry for a brilliant child. A brilliant and radiant star that burned out too fast. But left a wonderful impact on the artworld as one of the best of his generation.

Jean Michel Basquiat left home at the age of 17 to live on the streets of the Lower East Side to make his living as an artist.

It was the late 70’s and he found himself at the center of the world in terms of art, music and culture. There was CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, LES; there was art rock, punk rock, new wave, HipHop and all the cool kids, down-n-out kids, the losers, the weirdos, the young, the artistic, the ugly, the glamorama, the lace curtain kids, uptown kids, Manhattan kids, Brooklyn kids, the Bronx & Queens kids, the willing and the dangerous were creating and expressing themselves in an economically depressed (almost lawless) city and man was it a good time.

  On the walls of burnt out buildings, subway walls, doorways and postcards. He started writing graffiti under the name SAMO with abstract lines of poetry and then sold art on postcards to random people on the street. SAMO was beginning to attract attention from the curious forward-thinking eyes of the art world. A literal “Rags to Riches” story, From NYC to Europe, he traveled the world and shown his art in galleries internationally garnering equal acclaim as well disdain and prejudice from the orthodox bourgeoisie detractors of the High-ART elite. Truly, one of a kind. Avant-garde, musician, artist and, at one time, actor.
This Documentary is a perfect time capsule of what New York City use to be before the cornballs, transplants, Karens and douchebags took it over and ruined it.

Radiant Child is curated, produced & directed by Tamra Davis (Half Baked, CB4, Billy Madison). Built around an interview she did with Jean Michel in California after an art show in 1986. Tamra buried the interview to never to be seen by the public until 2010, after a few decades and suggestions by peers to release the interview, she decided to cutup the interview with compiled stories from people that knew him with archival footage and photographs to piece together the life and greatness of  the Radiant Child himself. This is a documentary you must see right now.

The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “Naturally, the doc is well illustrated with examples of Basquiat’s work, some of which are little-seen. But even those who dispute his place in art history should come away with a feeling for the man whose brief career is a textbook example of a flame burning too bright to last.”

The Artforum wrote: “The movie gives a sense of how driven he was, how it seemed as if he aimed, by sheer volume, to assure himself a place in the pantheon of twentieth-century painters, when in fact he achieved that position by virtue of a necessarily smaller number of masterpieces, produced in the early and late stages of his heartbreakingly short career.”

Recommended viewing : Keep Your Finger on that REWIND button.

“I will be back in Philadelphia, PA hosting a Delirium Tremens reading in support of the NEW Hainesville album “Natural City” dropping this year. That’s right I will be reading Hainesville stories some from the new album and one other. The event is FREE and there will be some free food. And as with every D.T. reading, there will be a limited open mic window.”
– SamHaiNe (Hainesville, Jade Palace Guard, NewRetroWave)

SamHaiNe presents: Hainesville “NATURAL CITY”
A cold winter night in the secret city.
A collection of short monologues and flash fictions highlighting some of the individuals that call Hainesville “Home”. Stories about people living outside the margins that define civility and existing in the moment. This is a future-present inspired by neo-noir, retro nostalgia and some cyberpunk aesthetics. Coming Soon in 2019 at SamHaiNe.bandcamp.com with physical media distributed by The Jade Palace Guard.
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