Rapper Tame, one of The Artifacts, dies at 52

Tame One, graffiti artist and rapper of groups The Artifacts and Weathermen, has died. He was 52.

Tame One death details

The rapper’s mother announced the death of her son, also known as Tamer Dizzle, in a Facebook post.

“I can‘t express this any other way,” Darlene Brown Harris said in the post. “My son, Rahem Brown, Tamer Dizzle, is dead.”

“The medical examiner says the six pharmaceutical drugs that Trinitas hospital prescribed to him last Friday, combined with the weed he smoked over this weekend…his heart simply gave out,” she said. “I will not be responding to all the posts for a bit, but the hardest words I will ever post or say is, my son, my heart, is dead.”

Rap career

Born Rahem Brown, the Newark native gravitated toward graffiti as an art form and soon fell in love with it. Tame One once said of graffiti, “It’s a mental release. I’ve been drawing all my life, so that just comes naturally. I’m keeping it as real as I possibly can with myself and with my music and I guess people relate. They don’t want the cookie cutter, every day on-the-radio shit.”

With his love of graffiti came hip-hop.

Tame One rose to prominence as a member of the hip-hop group The Artifacts in the early ’90s. He went on to record as a solo artist and as a member of other groups.

The Artifacts, consisting of El Da Sensei, Tame One and DJ Kaos, released their debut album “Between A Rock and a Hard Place” on Big Beat Records in 1994.

The first record from the lyricists, who were both graffiti artists and recording artists, bore the classic song “Wrong Side of Da Tracks,” which started with the sound of shaking spray paint cans. A music video for the track showcased audacious graffiti designs.

The Artifacts split after releasing their second album, “That’s Them,” in 1997. But they reunited in 2010 and were back as recently as August 2022 with the album “No Expiration Date”.

As a solo artist, Tame One released five albums as well as mixtapes and EPs. He also joined hip-hop supergroup the Weathermen with El-P, Aesop Rock, Camu Tao and Cage, appearing on 2003 mixtape “The Conspiracy.”

Tributes

DJ Premier, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Rah Digga, are among the artists to have paid tribute to Tame One. “I don’t even know what to say,” El-P wrote on Instagram. “Rest in peace to Tame One. The Artifact, the Weathermen crew member, the leak brother, the legend, and undoubtably the friend and family of many broken hearted people.”