Rammellzee vs. K-Rob - "Beat Bop" (Tartown, 1983)
“Beat Bop” was originally going to be the eighth entry in
this series, but I’ve been putting it off for months. It is for my money the
best song of the first five year period of hip-hop as a recorded art form,
before Run-D.M.C. landed with “Sucker M.C.’s” and changed the entire sound of
the genre overnight. In spite of its acclaim, it is still criminally slept on.
In fact Rammellzee, as a rapper, producer, and graffiti artist, and post-modern
multimedia art titan, is criminally slept on by all but the most dedicated
hip-hop heads and gallery dwellers. Writing about “Beat Bop” is a no-brainer.
Yet trying to do Rammellzee and “Beat Bop” justice is a
daunting task. “Beat Bop” is a ten minute epic that justifies its length and
feels much shorter, rendering the early hip-hop avant-garde at its most
accessible. Rammellzee himself was a notoriously mysterious and oblique figure,
and K-Rob has nearly been lost to history like so many of his generation of
hip-hop. What’s more, Jean-Michel Basquiat is credited as the producer of the
song, and his art graces the cover of the original promo-only vinyl pressing of
the song that was released by Tartown, but his actual involvement in the
recording has long been a point of contention.
