It’s been over fifteen years since Brooklyn Swamp Thing’s last mix tape, Rhymezomatous Herbs, dropped, and nearly a decade since he wowed audiences as Pig Bodine in Jim Jarmuch’s adaptation of Gravity’s Rainbow. But the Plant-Guy from Bed-Stuy is back with a new track and the promise of an album later this summer.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Brooklyn Swamp Thing broke onto the conscious hip hop scene in 1997 with his first LP, Hydrophonic Rhythm, on Rawkus Records. It showcased his hometown as a major lyrical theme, dealing with issues of poverty, gentrification, and the effects of the drug trade, as well as relationships. The second single, “Some Girls Are Actually Pretty Into That (Swamp D*ck),” dealt with finding love in the city as a Swamp Thing and cracked the Billboard Top 40.
The 1999 follow-up album, Brooklyn Swamp Thing Is…King Bulbasaurr, failed to chart as well as his debut. BST was still a major artist on the Rawkus lineup, but the slow album sales bothered him, and he began looking for other creative outlets.
“Swamp just needed to express himself,” recalled A Tribe Called Quest’s Phife Dawg in a 2008 interview, “but it wasn’t just his lyricism. Back in the day, Swamp had this mad crazy dance style. His d*ck would just come out right away, it was like Tarzan sh*t! Dragging on the ground, wrapping around chicks’ legs… And then the acting bug caught him.”
BST’s first acting gig was a supporting role in the Wes Anderson short The Elaborately Decorated Back Bedroom, followed by a disastrous lead role in a straight-to-video installment of the Leprechaun franchise: Leprechaun 5: I Have Lepatitis-C. The low-budget horror film is, at this point, probably best remembered for Roger Ebert’s one sentence review: “Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling for Leprechaun 5 – and they say that this movie sucks.”
Many counted Brooklyn Swamp Thing out of the acting game at that point, and he spent much of the early part of the new millennium recording guest bars on other artists’ tracks. His big break came in 2002, when he was approached by Matt Damon – hot off Ocean’s Eleven – and Ben Affleck to take a supporting role in their survival film Tuckerman’s Ravine. In one of the most iconic scenes in early 2000’s movie history, Brooklyn Swamp Thing, as Park Ranger McMaster, saved Ben Affleck from falling to his death in a frozen crevasse using only his prehensile, vine-like d*ck. Needless to say, Tuckerman’s was a blockbuster and earned Brooklyn Swamp Thing a Best Supporting Actor nod.
Brooklyn Swamp Thing saw moderate Hollywood success over the next decade, with leading roles in Born In Time (2003), Under The Red Sky (2005), and Handy Dandy (2009). His relocation to the West Coast seemed complete. Following the release of Gravity’s Rainbow (2015), he went under the radar. Sank below the surface, so to speak.
The disappearance of one of our brightest young talents at the peak of his powers was surprising. Rumors spread that after starting a family, Brooklyn Swamp Thing traded his celebrity for freedom and peace of mind. Many also conjectured that, having been raised in Brooklyn and transplanted to Los Angeles, BST wanted to finally live in a place that actually had swamps. To date, his agent and publicists have remained quiet on his “lost decade”, but that dam might be breaking.
With a post on X captioned, “Hey citizens of X! Coming back to BROOKLYN!!👽” Brooklyn Swamp Thing released a new track last Friday, entitled “Swamp Thing Fever”. It features a beat that many think was produced by DJ Hi-Tek and conspicuously samples the Buckner & Garcia novelty song “Pac Man Fever” from 1982. In their review of the cut, XXLMag.com said, “I think this is a joke. Damn.” and TheSource.com commented, “Is there, like, a Katy Perry rap song I can review or something? This blows.”
Ronald Sampson
