The last post, on Jay-Z and Basquiat sent my mind thinking back on Basquiat and rap music. I thought I’d bring up some appropriate old school.

It’s a cool video of Rammelzee MCing with Toxic C1 on the Big Beat Wheels of Steel at NYC’s Rhythm Lounge in 1983. The film has been worked on by Basquiat, including his unmistakable text-based drawing.  Basquiat first started being interested in text-over-video imaging while hanging out behind the scenes at Glen O’Brien’s ultra-low tech TV Party on Manhattan Cable in the late 1970s.

Basquiat started painting downtown just as early hip hop was beginning uptown. Fab 4 Freddy was key in bringing the world's together at the start. Basquiat never lived to see the explosion of more serious rap, with Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, who's political message would have intrigued him. But Grandmaster Flash's The Message became a hit just as Basquiat was becoming famous in 1982. Their work has many similarities.

Toxic, in the video above, used to hang out at Basquiat’s loft on Crosby St. around this time, and also did graffiti himself.  As described in my book, sometimes Basquiat and Fab 5 Freddy took Toxic and some of the other graffiti painters through the Manhattan art museums to expand their horizons.

Basquiat himself produced the influential Rammelzee vs K-Rob  Beat Bop record.

Rammellzee and Basquiat put this track together on a trip to LA. Basquiat also, obviously, designed the cover.

It was just featured at the Museum of Modern Art “Looking at Music: side 2” exhibition on music and art in 1970s and 80s New York (http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/lookingatmusic2/, check out the audio excerpts for Fab 5 Freddy and Diego Cortez on music and graffiti in New York City).