Tame One of Legendary New Jersey Rap Group The Artifacts Has Died

Rapper Tame One of New Jersey rap trio The Artifacts died on Saturday, November 5. The artist was 52-years-old.

Fans of legendary New Jersey rap trio The Artifacts are paying respects to member Tame One. The rapper and graffiti artist, real name Rahem Brown (also known as Tamer Dizzle), died on Saturday (November 5) at 52-years-old. Brown's mother announced the news of her son's death in a Facebook post Sunday night.

“I can‘t express this any other way,” Darlene Brown Harris wrote 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.”

A graduate of Newark’s Vailsburg High School, Brown became a founding member of The Artifacts in the early '90s along with fellow MC El Da Sensei and DJ Kaos. The group's debut album Between a Rock and a Hard Place was released on Big Beat Records in 1994. The album boasted "Wrong Side of da Tracks," "Dynamite Soul" and "C'mon wit da Git Down," which featured Busta Rhymes on the remix. Following the release of their 1997 sophomore album That's Them, the trio briefly dissolved, releasing their third album No Expiration Date in 2022.

Brown, who was a first cousin to Redman, was also a member of rap duo Leak Bros with rapper Cage and supergroup The Weathermen with the aforementioned Cage, Aesop Rock, El-P, Yak Ballz, Camu Tao and more. Brown released seven solo projects during his lifetime, the last being Skwazdilla in 2014.

Read more tributes to Tame One below.