A-T-3 013 Rammellzee Verses K-Rob - Beat Bop
Dark Side Of The Moon, Unknown Pleasures, Aladdin Sane these are albums that have artwork that exists as a commodity independent of the music it originally packaged, Beat Bop is like this but even fewer people are interested in the the original music it contained
For close to forty years Beat Bop has been a highly sought after record by a tiny group of people (compared with the amount of fans of Dark Side Of The Moon etc). Here's some background on the Jean-Michel Basquiat produced record https://www.spin.com/2013/11/beat-bop-basquiat-k-rob-rammellzee-freak-freak/
In 2014 after years of bootlegs Beat Bop was given its first legit re-issue with fully licensed artwork, limited to 1983 copies
Then in 2020 a original copy was sold at Sotherby's for $126,000 https://nostalgiaking.com/2020/09/17/why-your-rammellzee-vs-k-rob-is-not-worth-100k/
As of 2023 you can cover your body and home in Beat Bop. It appears after the Sotheby's sale whoever owns the licence for the Beat Bop sleeve artwork decided to go Disney and licence it to anyone and everyone, the image is on t-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, mugs, and rugs... some of it is massively expensive to fit with your high rent neoliberal gentrified hipster flat, other stuff like socks and those members only jackets really cheap looking but aspirational... like you to live in a Soho flat
In our image saturated attention needy society we advertise all of ourselves to everyone else all the time, our lifestyles, our loves, our work, our fine taste... the Beat Bop artwork on an Abercrombie sweatshirt is one way to do that, it may fill a void but it's not real. In his famous essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" David Foster Wallace writes
An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's insidious is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit... it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defences even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true good will
The effect of this, Wallace argues, is to leave us feeling "confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared" (h/t Nathalie Olah) and that's the way I feel when I see artwork I love printed on a pair of socks. I was in Dublin last year and an old lady walked past me wearing a Snoopy t-shirt, I clocked it because I'd recently seen the exact same image printed on a t-shirt for a streetwear brand selling for over £100. Snoopy has been picked up by several couture labels in the last few years, it's obscene and out of character, in a neoliberal twist Snoopy as pop icon goes Gordon Gekko
Basquiat and Snoopy are of equal value when we're discussing prints on clothing and homewares
Back to the music (without the sleeve artwork)
In addition to Jean-Michel Basquiat's Tartown Record Co. release of Beat Bop with his original artwork Beat Bop was issued by Profile Records in a generic sleeve. In the UK Beat Bop is included on the incredible Street Sounds Electro 2 compilation
Almost a decade later the Beastie Boys sample Beat Bop on Check Your Head in 1992, a Beat Bop sample is used as a premise for a track on 1994s Ill Communication, later that year the short version is included on the compilation Diggin' In The Crates - Profile Rap Classics Volume One, and in 1996 J Saul Kane's Beat Classic compilation makes the full vocal version available again. Each of these events introduce Beat Bop to people who would have been too young to catch it the first time around
If like me you're a record collector and you like the track and it's history it's only natural to try and seek out a copy with the sleeve artwork
Beat Bop wasn't Jean-Michel Basquiat's only foray into music he formed an industrial rock band with Michael Holman called Gray in 1979
Rammellzee Vs K-Rob - Beat Bop
After the proper release on Downtown 81 (New York Beat Movie) in 2000 the soundtrack appeared with this alternative version of Beat Bop titled Test Pressing Instrumental Version 1
