Rammellzee - Fashion for an Exploding, Dance Making Brain

 
Ramellzee—the artist, theoretician, and rapper with a made-up name derived from a mathmatical equation—died last week. If someone, somewhere isn't basing their next collection on his life and works, then they should be.

Rammellzee in Style Wars

Ramellzee found his first noteriety as an MC and graffiti artist in New York in the late 70s, later going on to appear
in the films Wild Style and Style Wars. Michael Basquiat even funded single "Beat Bop", which some call the most radical hip-hop single of all time. Though he was Latino, not black, Rammellzee carried the mad outfits and stoned prophecies of Afrofutrism beyond the early eighties. It's said he could ad-lib rap for hours on subjects like thermodynamics, astrophyiscs, and linguistics, while being technically correct and actually making sense. There's a lot of his abstract and metaphorical style in the Wu-Tang. He was also known for talking about himself in the third person. Then there were the outfits; Rammellzee made figures and his costumes out of garbage, building the sort of outfits that go with a guy who'd named his loft the "battle station". In short, Rammellzee had fantastic style and knew how to communicate it.

Performing in a facemask

Typical Rammellzee outfit features included flame-throwers and built-in sound systems; he labeled his outlook "Gothic Futurism", although it's really nothing to do with Gareth Pugh. The main thrust was that, like medieval monks with caligraphy, graffiti writers are able to bring the musical and mystical power of the written word alive—an essential task because the power of letters was being held back my the corruption of the Roman alphabet (read more about it here).

Apparently, his name is derived from RAM, plus M for magnitude, Sigma (Σ) the first summation operator, L forlongitude, 
_L for latitude, Z for z-bar, plus a couple more summation operators (Σ) for good luck._

Fashion wise, Gothic Futurism and the related theory of "Ikonoklast Panzerism" resulted in great outfits. London-based designer Noki—with his sloganeering, metaphorical connections, word creation, and habit of talking in the third person—owes a lot to Rammellzee.

Fashion has a pretty awesome vocabulary. It can do sexy in a million different ways—fun, kerazy, moody sophistication, rebellion—but "I'm so hungry for knowledge that my brain is exploding and it's gonna make you dance" is a look that is sorely missing from most wardrobes. DARYOUSH HAJ-NAJAFI