Hip-Hop Pioneer Rammellzee Dies at 50

Hip-hop pioneer and street art legend Rammellzee, best known for his landmark 1983 12" single "Beat Bop" and a memorable performance in Wild Style, passed away Monday, June 28th at the age of 50. The news was first revealed by Fab 5 Freddy, who also starred in Wild Style, on his Twitter; the cause of Rammellzee's death is still unknown.

Rammellzee and K-Rob's "Beat Bop," a 10-minute-long hip-hop track now regarded as one of the most revered songs of rap's early era, was produced by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who also drew the cover art, resulting in the 12" becoming a major collector's item. The song served as an inspiration for the Beastie Boys, who would go on to sample "Beat Bop" twice over the course of their own careers, in the tracks "Jimmy James" and "B-Boys Makin.'" In recent years, Rammellzee focused on creating art instead of music, although he did make time to collaborate with avant-garde musician Bill Laswell, guitarist Buckethead and hip-hop collective Death Comet Crew.

Rammellzee's collaborator R-One remembered his friend on Ram's MySpace page. "As I type this, I'm numb from overwhelming sadness," he wrote. "As I carry the "R" you christened me with, I will make sure your legacy lives on...I will celebrate your life until I join you."

Check out a clip of Rammellzee's track "Beat Bop" below:

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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