Tame One

A passionate advocate for graffiti who also created pieces under that banner himself, Tame One entered hip-hop during the early 1990s alongside fellow New Jersey artists in the group the Artifacts. Born Rahem Brown, he and El Da Sensei earned strong acclaim for the graffiti-centric single “Wrong Side of da Tracks” and the subsequent full-length Between a Rock and a Hard Place (1994). Following the duo’s dissolution in the late 1990s, Brown spent several years without issuing substantial new work, though he continued recording with his Boom Skwad collective and put out a handful of independent 12-inch singles. Late in 2001 he connected with the former Rawkus Records act the High & Mighty and signed to their freshly launched Eastern Conference Records. The New Jersey MC kept a high level of activity inside New York’s underground circuit, linking with additional Eastern Conference roster members and with artists from the Definitive Jux label. He became part of the Weathermen, the 2002 collective assembled by Cage and El-P, and early the next year delivered his solo debut and Eastern Conference bow, When Rappers Attack, whose beats came from the respected producers DJ Mighty Mi, Rjd2, and J-Zone. Capitalizing on that fresh underground visibility, he issued Waterworld (2004) alongside labelmate Cage under the name the deranged Leak Bros. and followed with the second solo album O.G. Bobby Johnson (2005), whose title referenced the 1992 film South Central. That project featured production exclusively from his New Jersey associates the Boom Skwad and the Dusted Dons. Completing his two-album obligation to Eastern Conference, Brown then moved to Blazin’ and released the 2006 LP Spazmatic. The same year he also completed Slow Suicide Stimulus, a joint venture with the Dusted Dons. He remained active throughout the 2010s, issuing further projects that included the 2009 collaborations Acid Tab Vocab with Parallel Thought and Parallel Uni-Verses with Del The Funky Homosapien. Brown passed away on November 5, 2022.