Happy 20th Anniversary to Tame One’s debut solo album When Rappers Attack, originally released March 25, 2003.
Hip-hop lost a true lyrical warrior when Rahem “Tame One” Brown passed in late 2022. As both a member of the duo Artifacts and as a solo artist, Tame was quietly one of the better emcees during his heyday. He was never the flashiest artist, but his talent made him stand out on any track he rhymed on. Tame oozed detached cool when on the mic, even while executing complicated verbal gymnastics. This is especially true on his debut solo project When Rappers Attack, released 20 years ago.
As a member of Artifacts, along with El Da Sensei, Tame released two extremely dope albums during the mid-1990s, each distributed through Big Beat Records. Artifacts were an example of no frills, gimmick-free hip-hop at its finest, with Tame shining brightly on Between a Rock and a Hard Place (1994) and That’s Them (1997). Unfortunately, though both albums received considerable critical acclaim, neither were commercial successes.
As things were beginning to sour at Big Beat, Tame and El Da Sensei put out an independent 12” as The Brick City Kids. Released on the then-nascent Rawkus Records imprint and produced/presented by the Ghetto Professionals (JuJu and V.I.C. of the Beatnuts), the self-titled single made some noise on the underground scene. Unfortunately, Artifacts weren’t able to survive as a group for much longer afterwards, and Tame and El each went their separate ways, citing creative differences and personality conflicts.
As a solo artist, Tame spent the next few years releasing a few 12”s independently, before signing with Eastern Conference Records, an imprint run by Philadelphia-born hip-hop duo The High & Mighty. He also became a member of The Weathermen collective, an extensive crew formed by fellow Eastern Conference signee Cage, whose ranks included other members of the Eastern Conference roster, Definitive Jux signees, and other affiliates.
Soon afterwards, Tame dropped When Rappers Attack, a rock-solid, no-frills project. Tame plays to his strengths throughout the album, though he’s a slightly different animal than heard via his Artifacts/Brick City Kids incarnations. He still possesses the confidence and cool, along with the verbal dexterity and effortless flow. But Tame is a bit more world weary and jaded, while simultaneously being rougher around the edges. The album wasn’t Tame’s audition for another major label deal. During an era when the market was flooded with emcees seeking commercial acceptance, he proves that he’s comfortable just creating banging, uncompromised hip-hop.
Tame uses the album-opening title track as his mission statement, as he expresses zero interest in any effort to water down his music in hopes of broader appeal. He echoes similar sentiments on the Camu Tao-produced grim dirge “Act Right,” refusing to put himself into an easily consumable box. “Don’t compare me to nothing you heard, that’s my word,” he raps. “They’ll be picking you off of the curb for working my nerves.”
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Tame sounds especially dope over a trio of tracks produced by J-Zone. There was something about the producer’s off-kilter musical stylings during the mid-’00s that suited Tame’s raw sensibilities, as the swirling sound on the songs “Heat” and “Tame As It Ever Was” complemented the emcee’s gruff vocals well. It’s a shame that they never collaborated again after When Rappers Attack.
“Tame As It Ever Was” vibrates with frenetic energy, powered by a hectic string sample and horns. Tame throws in a halfway dis, halfway shout to his former rhyme partner on the track, rapping, “I don’t talk much and plus I still don’t even fuck with such and such / But if you see him on the low, then say ‘What’s up?’”
The J-Zone-produced “Slick Talkin” is a brief, one-verse exhibition, with Tame wrecking shop over an understated drum track and an East Asian string sample. Keeping things simple suits him well, as he raps, “God bless anybody who stress my next written / One of the best spitting, you soft like wet kittens.” An expanded version of the track appears on The Weathermen’s The Conspiracy mix CD, featuring a second verse from The Juggaknots’ Breeze Brewin. But as dope as Brewin’s verse is, the song is more potent in its shorter incarnation on When Rappers Attack.
Tame deploys a similar half-long/twice-strong strategy with “Concerto,” as he flows smoothly over a string and piano sample from School House Rock, describing himself as a “one man Wu-Tang Clan; you can’t whack him / A made man, hood Goodfella from out the wasteland.” But he’s also able to deliver three straight verses of murderous verbals on tracks like “Up To No Good Again.” Producer RJD2 works his magic behind the boards, chopping and manipulating multiple samples to craft a churning track, while Tame packs each verse with a mind-bending amount of syllables. “You ain’t never been as nice as me and won’t ever be,” Tame raps. “Don’t step to me, you ain’t stressing me or impressing me.”
When Rappers Attack features a sole guest appearance, as Tame One brings in Cage for the DJ Mighty Mi-produced “Leak Smoke.” The track is dedicated to the virtues of smoking PCP/Angel-Dust, which was fairly unorthodox subject matter. In the past, other rappers had described their experiences on “sherm,” such as Coolio and Jayo Felony, but few have made as full-throated endorsements of smoking cigarettes dipped in embalming fluid as Tame and Cage do here.
And who am I to argue with the results, as the “chubby Patrick Bateman and the notty-headed Sleestak” describing their wild misadventures makes for good music. Tame One manages to sound fly even when on “more Red Devil than Lee doing the whole car,” rapping, “Take it as a threat when you see me with a jar dipping my cigarettes / With twisted intellect and using words that ain’t invented yet.” Soon after, Cage and Tame officially formed the duo The Leak Bros. and recorded Waterworld (2004), an entire album dedicated to their dalliances with the drug.
“Moment I Feared,” a cover of the Slick Rick track of the same name, is the least successful song on the album. One of the appealing things about the original version was that Rick used it to skewer his own larger-than-life persona: he gets jacked and beaten for his fake gold chains early on, and ends the track incarcerated for murder and the victim of prison rape, while somehow playing it all for humor. In contrast, Tame decided to maintain his aura of street-smart cool throughout his take, and it just doesn’t translate as well.
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Tame gets more introspective on “Dreamz,” rapping from the perspective of a world-weary veteran of the music industry. He works to honor the genre’s history, while other up-and-comers look to use hip-hop to make a quick buck. He later mocks these same mainstream emcees on “Iz It Me?”, blasting the lack of originality by mainstream rapper-singers over a soulful track produced by Johnny Dangerously. “From interludes down to interviews, you got your head so far up his ass, his back pockets got tennis shoes,” he muses.
Tame ends When Rappers Attack by revisiting hallowed territory for the emcee. Artifacts’ best-known track is “Wrong Side of Da Tracks,” considered the best overall dedication to the art of Graffiti ever recorded. Tame was an accomplished graf writer while honing his skills as an emcee, and throughout When Rappers Attack, he makes frequent references to his first love. “Homage 2 Da Bomberz” is a dedication to his days of wreaking havoc with a marker and spray-can throughout the Jersey area. Tame details his experiences bombing the Newark area, shouting out his graf cohorts and explaining his modus operandi. “Decorating whole blocks in the name of hip-hop,” he raps. “Just to have something to look at when the music stops.”
Tame released a bevy of projects in the subsequent two decades, including additional solo albums, mixtapes, and group endeavors, including an Artifacts reunion album which dropped just months before his death. A constant through all of it was Tame’s uncompromised approach. When Rappers Attack established that he was comfortable with who he was as an artist, and that making himself more accessible was never a realistic option. Few emcees were as strong in their convictions, and even fewer felt as authentic as Tame One on the mic with his solo debut.
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