‘Rammellzee was an electric presence’: Thurston Moore on NYC’s graffiti-writing hip-hop pioneer

Sonic Youth’s frontman pays homage to the otherworldly New York City artist who turned graffiti into a futurist art weapon and used experimental linguistics to escape definitionThe New York artist Rammellzee was, without a doubt, one of the most intriguing visionaries of hip-hop culture from its mid-70s origins. Raised in the remote beach front outpost of Far Rockaway, Queens, the final stop on the storied A train, Rammellzee discovered the art of graffiti while noticing another teen spray-painting his tag, “Sonic Bad”, at 57th Street station. Already engaged in his own personal investigation of calligraphic writing, Rammellzee was instantly fascinated. He soon found himself descending into the dark underworld of subway tunnels where train cars stood motionless, throwing up his tag across the metal shells with only a haze of visibility to focus, anxiously aware of being nabbed by transit cops.Rammellzee, a tall, lean Black and Italian-American mixed-race kid, bounded about with a distinctive style: a mélange of hip-hop flash and vintage soul musician funk – a look he would play with for his entire life. As a youngster in the mid-70s he joined the graffiti renaissance and invested in it a personal and wholly other critical perception, one that was entirely esoteric, if not otherworldly. Continue reading...