Rammellzee

Rammellzee (stylized RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ, pronounced "Ram: Ell: Zee"; late 1960 – June 27, 2010) was a visual artist, gothic futurist "graffiti writer", painter, performance artist, hip hop musician, art theoretician, and sculptor from New York City.

In 2010 Buckethead released a tribute song called, 'Rammellzee: Hero of the Abyss'.

Rammellzzee 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.

In 1988, he and his band Gettovetts recorded the album Missionaries Moving. In 2003, Rammellzee released his debut album, This Is What You Made Me, and performed at the Knitting Factory in New York with the newly reformed Death Comet Crew. Subsequently, Troubleman Unlimited re-released recordings made by DCC between 1982 and 1984. Their single for Exterior St was featured on the compilation Anti-NY with Ike Yard, Sexual Harassment, and Vivien Goldman, among others. In 2004, Rammellzee released his second album Bi-Conicals of the Rammellzee, produced by Gamma Records.

Discovered by a larger audience through the 1982 cult movie Wild Style by Charlie Ahearn, his earlier fame in graffiti circles was established when he painted New York subway trains with DONDI, OU3, and Ink 76, and doctor Revolt under his aliases Hyte, Hytestyr, EG (Evolution Griller the Master Killer), Sharissk Boo, Razz, and Maestro on the A, CC, 2 and 5 subway lines. Rammellzee was also an occasional member of the Death Comet Crew, with Stuart Argabright, Michael Diekmann and Shinichi Shimokawa. As a student, he studied dentistry at the Clara Barton High School for Health Professions, was a model for Wilhelmina (under the name Mcrammellzee), and briefly studied jewelry design at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). He also wrote an opera “The Requiem of Gothic Futurism” in 1985, "offered to send the U.S. military some of the intelligence he had gathered for national defense," and "tried to promote his ideas by producing a comic book and a board game." He was also the first artist to collaborate with the streetwear brand Supreme, making hand-painted trucker hats at their first store in 1994.

Rammellzee was also an original hip hop artist who introduced specific vocal styles which date back to the early 1980s. His influence can be heard in artists such as Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill. His 12-inch single Beat Bop, in collaboration with rapper K-Rob and with cover art by Jean-Michel Basquiat, is considered by some to be the most valuable (meaning collectible) hip-hop record of all time. Beat Bop was also featured in the film Style Wars. Rammellzee makes a cameo appearance near the end of Jim Jarmusch's 1984 film Stranger Than Paradise.

Rammellzee's 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 popular place in the 1980s and 1990s for artists to visit, because Rammellzee's artwork and costumes created a unique atmosphere. 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."

He legally changed his name to Rammellzee in 1979 and friends who knew his birth name were unwilling to reveal it, in accordance with his wishes. He sometimes went by the shortened name of “Ramm”. 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. He has credited Jamel-Z, a mentor from the Nation of Gods and Earths he met in 1977, with inspiration for his name.

Rammellzee was born in 1960 in Far Rockaway, to an African-American mother and Italian father who worked as a transit detective. He grew up in the borough of Queens in New York City near the Far Rockaway–Mott Avenue A train terminal station. His graffiti work started to show up in the 1970s on New York City's subway cars and stations, specifically on the A-train since it was his local train.