A couple of years ago, La Philharmonie de Paris gifted us a magnificent exhibition on the sound side of Jean Micheal Basquiat’s universe. This year Le Palais de Tokyo offers the best possible sequel with a dedicated exhibition to the mysterious, New York’s enigma Rammellzee.

WHO IS RAMMELLZEE?

“instrumental in introducing elements of the avant-garde into hip-hop culture”.

Rammellzee (stylized as RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ) was a graffiti artist, painter, sculptor and a hip-hop icon from New York City. His real name? no one really knows, although he legally changed his name to Rammellzee, his real name was never revealed.

While a lot of people have discovered him thanks to the 1983 Hip-Hop documentary “Wild Style”, my first encounter of Rammellzee’s work was his (and K-Rob’s) Basquiat-produced “Beat Bop”.

The exhibition starts with a huge mural presenting a timeline starting more than a century before Rammellzee’s birth, and later his life and his cultural adventures.

Rammellzee’s graffiti and art work are based on his theory of Gothic Futurism, which describes the battle between letters and their symbolic warfare against any standardizations enforced by the rules of the alphabet.

His treatise, Ionic treatise Gothic Futurism assassin knowledges of the remanipulated square point’s one to 720° to 1440°, details an anarchic plan by which to revise the role and deployment of language in society. Rammellzee performed in self-designed masks and costumes of different characters which represented the “mathematical equation” that is Rammellzee.

On the basis of his Gothic Futurism approach, he described his artistic work as the logical extension into a new phase which he calls Ikonoklast Panzerism. This artistic work has been shown in art galleries throughout the US and Europe. His Letter Racers, and other Noise includes artistic works by individuals mostly identified with their musical contributions.” wikipedia

Excellent exhibition overall, you can explore tons of stuff in an hour that would have taken you a lot more if you were just looking for stuff on the internet. Really loved the printed timeline on the walls, which had a great amount of information & details.

However I’d say that the exhibition itself was kind of focused on the visual side of works (mostly sculpture), but Rammellzee was much more than that. You’d wish if it included more Hip-Hop related works, footages etc.), especially given the fact that hip-hop turned 50 recently.

Alongside Basquiat, Futura and others, he witnessed the development of graffiti culture and graphic codes. Alongside them, he took part in the first hip-hop festival organized by Henry Chalfant, Graffiti Rock. Rammellzee took part both as a graffiti artist and rapper.

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“if Hip-Hop became a person, it’d be Rammellzee”
-someone on youtube

Closing with a couple of documentaries, if you wanna keep diving in..

The legacy continues.