Fab 5 Freddy was hip-hop's first cultural interlocutor on the low.
Even before all the essential elements formally coalesced, he'd built a graffiti bridge between Uptown's subway depots and New York's Downtown Arts scene; been on a first-name basis with Basquiat back when Jean-Michel was still an anonymous tagger known as SAMO; spit the gift to Blondie ("Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly") while parlaying the cult classic, Wild Style, to the big screen; and, by the time the self-described "king of synthesis" was profiled by Susan Orlean in the New Yorker, bumrushed every living room with a cable box in Middle America.
Cable was pumping in suburban Black America, too. And every Saturday night, tuning into Yo! MTV Raps, beginning in late summer '88, became both a rite of passage and a passport to a world previously unmediated by the mainstream. Driving the highest ratings on a network that had only just started adding music videos by Black artists into regular rotation, our guide was a dark-skinned brother — donning a fedora and even darker shades — whose rebirth-of-cool swag owed as much to bebop as it did hip-hop.
The new memoir, Everybody's Fly: A Life of Art Music and Changing the Culture, is a cultural biography propelled by Fab's curiosity. Or a cookbook with recipes in abundance. Whether digging in the crates of art history, collecting and curating his own party tapes, catching a vibe from his godfather Max Roach or contact highs from his dad's politically-conscious circle of weed- and jazz-connoisseur friends, Fab mastered the art of soaking up game from jump. A quote he plucked from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, like a fortune cookie, would teach him how to apply it: "They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." His quests to put some paint — and appreciation — where it ain't pushed him beyond his native Brooklyn, connecting the dots that would expand hip-hop's playing field from the white-male dominant world of pop art to the top of the Billboard charts.
Curiosity still enlivens this cat. I went into our Zoom call hoping to glean the OGs perspective. On hip-hop's current wave of clickbait media personalities; on whether or not he's outgrown rap; on the enduring legacy of his old friend Basquiat. What I didn't expect was a detour worthy of a Yo! reboot, as he schooled me on an Indian rapper with international street cred and billions of YouTube views. And he didn't even have to travel far to find him. His Uber driver gave him the scoop.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rodney Carmichael: Early on, you latched onto the theory that culture consists of several key elements — music and dance and art — and that hip-hop, even before it has an agreed upon name, has these elements. Most people who were trying to pitch hip-hop as a thing of value that early had a product to sell. What motivated you as a pitch man for the culture, coming from this purely artistic point of view?
Fab 5 Freddy: Well, my initial motivation was being a painter and being looked at as a serious artist, coming from a background [where] we were getting no respect anywhere. It's a very racist way of depicting Black youth and Latin youth, if you had any kind of hip swagger. So I was like, s***, that's a problem. [I was] almost thinking in terms of how to hack the system, if you will, and to disrupt. As I began to get this idea of us being visual artists — or some of us that had developed — I wanted to create the narrative of who we were, in a sense, to give that positive spin. That's what also motivated the film [Wild Style], but shaping it in a way where people could see it more broadly.
In the book you write about how you based your onscreen persona of Fab 5 Freddy for Yo! MTV Raps off of the character Phade that you played in Wild Style. But you also were pulling from what sounds like this amalgamation of people and characters and even genres that you experienced up close. Talk a little bit about everything that went into creating the persona.
Well, I guess a part of it is I'm from the streets. Sometimes [we] articulate in the way that we're talking now. Boom. But then, almost with the equivalent of being able to speak in different dialects or different languages or communicate with certain people, my s*** just flips automatically. There were moments when we would be taping Yo! MTV Raps and I would just say something that was so ebonically incorrect. My producers would be like 'Yo Fab, that was a good segment but we should reshoot that one.' I'd be like, 'Why?' He'd say, ''Cause you said ….' And it'd be some[thing] crazy! [laughs]. It's like that whole gaze concept. I'd be like I can't come off saying s*** that twisted, you know what I'm saying.
You remember an example?
Not really. But what I would always think of [was] Robert Townsend's movie Hollywood Shuffle. It was the scene where the director was telling them, No, you gotta be more Black. And Robert Townsend['s character] was like, 'Oh, I get it: I ain't be got no weapon'. Like an intelligent brother trying to be extra [laughs]. That's an extreme example of it. But sometimes my s*** would just come out like, 'Yo, I said what?'
There was this cat named Kase. He's a legendary graffiti artist that had one arm. You can't even imagine, how does a dude with one arm get nice doing graffiti? You got to climb and do all this weird s*** to be in them train yards. Plus, he had a real incredible way of talking that I kind of likened to what George Clinton and P-Funk were doing with language, but at the same time you'd be like, Yo, you just really articulated in such a fly way. When you understand Shakespeare and what poets do, [you realize] we come up with incredible ways of remixing language. I've always had an ear for the fly, slick s*** 'cause my pops and them was the same way. The bebop cats were highly intellectual but also real cool, real street, on the corner. All of that energy was combined for my Phade character. And then, when it comes to who I'm going to be on Yo! MTV Raps, that was the flavor inspired by the Phade persona.
You were like our first tour guide — hip-hop's first tour guide.
That's still completely amazing to me, just to keep it a hundred. The ways the culture has spread out and moved around is just unbelievable.
The kind of DIY aspects of creating a lot of the elements of this culture just translated beyond expectation to like-minded people from similar situations around the world. Sometimes you'll see the culture thriving in places that really, really economically are similar to the level where the Bronx was then. The levels of poverty in New York at the time were way more extreme. When you went into pockets of real slums, ghettos, how some people lived in some of these poor areas was unbelievable. I'm sure there's people going through it [in New York still], struggling and things of that nature, but when I see how it connects in other places around the world, it has that same [resonance]. You feel that: This is all I got and I'm using this to let you know that I am here!
Many places around the globe, you get an inkling of that. And they're rapping their a**** off. I don't know what the f*** is being said [but] I'm like, Oh s***, y'all got your own thing. Like in India, there's some wild s***. A couple of years ago I was in an Uber and struck up a convo with the driver, who I'm pretty sure was Sikh because he had his headwrap. We started talking about music and he was like, "Let me play you the kind of hip-hop that's popping over in India." He didn't know who I am or anything. And he started telling me about this cat [who] had just gotten killed. And some of the ways that the gangster aspects — Biggie, Tupac, some of that energy — were picked up and translated around other countries. They took that s*** way more serious. Even though things did happen, a lot of us understand that this s*** is theater. Ninety percent of what you're rapping about didn't happen, but your storytelling — the way you sold it — is incredible. We can believe it the way we believe a great actor on screen. But I've seen examples in other places where these cats take that s*** to, like, I'm really gonna play that out.
This Indian rapper he put me up on [Sidhu Moose Wala] was on some real gangster s***. So he got mega big and some other rival cats rolled up and lit [him] up. Like, completely. And I'm like, What?! He had just gotten [killed] like a couple of weeks prior. I went online and he came up in my timeline on YouTube. It was the video that he had done just before he got smoked. So it was like a prophetic thing, because it was gangsta s*** in the video. Those kinds of things I find just really remarkable.
Hip-hop has been considered youth culture for so long. It feels like we're just getting to an era where legacy acts get to release albums, 20 or 30 years in the game, and they're well received. Do you still consider yourself hip-hop? Or do you feel like you outgrew it at some point?
Yeah, I've continually been amazed at the resilience and the different variations that continue to happen and to surprise me, in terms of what people are doing — all the various genres and the different people in other places doing it, when I get a chance to give a listen. And I like the variation of stuff, even though something that's greatly affected the game is the change of the structure of the business now. We have access to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of records. There is good and bad as you look at anything. But yeah, there are interesting things that still happen. And I still enjoy being surprised or just being able to just go on YouTube sometimes and listen to old-school tapes that were so coveted by me in terms of my development. Just going down the rabbit hole. People just post all this incredible stuff and you can get access to it, so that's incredible. It's remarkable how much content is available to us, and within that content there's still good things happening. People looking back at the beginnings of hip-hop and people trying to push it. Not that I've ever gone around and waved the 'I'm hip-hop' flag, because my role is I've been blessed to have been integral with the music in helping shape and form it for so long. But also at the core, it's been a lot of times when it seems to be quiet and then interesting things happen. Interesting artists still emerge. One I can remember — and I'm sure there are a bunch more — is that sister Doechii.
She's dope.
Oh my god. I lean towards lyrical people that can really play with them words and bring some real flavor to the table. Like unique, you don't immediately make me think of anybody else. Those were the kind of constructs that my taste was shaped by and I still have high respect for. I'm not shutting down the door on nobody, whether people call them mumble or [whatever], I don't rock like that. But when something emerges where you cannot deny — like whoa! — you know what I mean.
You seem like one of those OGs that doesn't really bemoan where hip-hop went or what hip-hop turned into – which, I'm younger than you, and even I do that sometimes.
Sometimes I do, too. Listen, it comes through. I go, damn. But it's never the glass half-empty for me. I am always remaining somewhat optimistic and pleasantly surprised to find these little pockets of interesting things happening that are really dope. An artist like Nas doing the things he's doing with Mass Appeal.
My dad was a great example of more of a pure jazz guy. He grew up in the swing era. And as a young man bebop blew up, and he was right there hanging with Max [Roach], one of the key players. When Miles goes electric, my dad wasn't messing with none of that. Of course, I was into that. He was like, "Ah, that's that bulls***." So, that's my first experience seeing my dad and his crew not connect with Miles [saying], 'Look, I am ready to shift these gears now.' Which was remarkable. And Max was into that as well. We experimented together but I realize, as time has gone on, how much further Max wanted to go with that.
Did you foresee Basquiat becoming such an enduring icon to the degree that he has?
That's fantastic to see. It's always kind of blended with the fact that I wish my man was still around, because you know it would be different. I'm sure when you're gone that young and you have all this incredible mythic, just pop-star-and-beyond stuff around you that just continues to just build and elevate.
When you think about his story and him passing at such a young age, I wonder is the early tragedy part of what skyrockets them into fame? We have Pac and Biggie, but they were already the biggest stars in hip hop at the time. Maybe it's harder to say that with him because it still took decades for him to grow into this icon.
Well, that's an interesting point. The way media works now, we're relentlessly hit with a shower of information. But the thing about Jean is he was very aware and conscious with a prodigy's sense — I guess several of us were — of the art-world game and how to play it. Clearly, nobody has it completely figured out. But at a young age, we were very cognizant of making certain moves that can get to certain places. Jean put it in effect in an incredible way then, so the rocket had really taken off. Then the whole combination of just the connections, the film after film and all these different references and more and more people discovering and embracing his work.
It's just such a remarkably executed play, if you will. Very intentional. But no one can predict. Jean did not intentionally want to check out at that age, but that also coincides with the other kind of mythology around the so-called 27 Club. Not that I adhere to it, but when these are things that factor in, you go wait a minute: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison. It's like this whole string of people. It's remarkable. Yeah, it's been over a longer period of time for Jean. But I think it's the combination of the work and the images. There's a big coffee-table book that [came out] several years ago, almost entirely photos taken by Andy Warhol. They're in many photos together. And what's remarkable about these photos is how on point and ahead of the curve Andy was. Before the book came out, the people that put it together reached out to me because they didn't know who all these people were at all these different functions — particularly when Andy and Jean were hanging out. It was a lot of Downtown people that I knew well that didn't become super, super well-known. And it hit me that the most photographs of Jean-Michel were taken by Andy because he took pictures constantly. Everywhere they went. Everything they did. The same way we all do now: You're at a concert. Everybody's got their phone up. It's wild. Everybody's filming everything and taking pictures of everything at the same time. Hence, the whole 'fifteen minutes [of fame]' or whatever. But all of that is a part of what I see.
There are a couple of Jean-Michel Instagram tribute pages that pop up, and I'm constantly amazed at all the imagery — which all adds to it. It's a whole interesting thing. Different than Pac and Biggie — but similar — when you check out young [and] you've left an incredible body of work. I think Pac maybe even more than Biggie, because he did movies as well so you have that larger than life thing. And Jean would have definitely done more films, produced more music, things that we talked about. So it's sad. These are the things I know that would have continued happening because we both had similar interests. He just went and made a rap record after I turned him on. Let's get busy on the film side. He would have definitely dabbled in that sandbox a little more for sure.
Fab 5 Freddy comes out of this lineage — the radio jocks you came up listening to, from Jocko to Frankie Crocker — and you end up being the forebear to this current generation of hip-hop media personalities. But now that hip-hop is a full-blown industry, a lot of personalities see it as a paycheck more than something to protect. Do you see them as your offspring, and if so, how do you feel about where they've taken it?
I don't know if I see them as a direct offspring but clearly I'm a precursor. And in the way TV was a window at that time, that window has now widened considerably. It's funny. I recently did the Drink Champs show and N.O.R.E. went on and on about that, really gracious, like "Yo, you were the precursor." It's all good. Sometimes there is a sizable amount of people that clearly are going for the bag, if you will. It depends on the quality of the work. If you are just gratuitously chasing the paper, it becomes really obvious. There's so much aggressive, hand-to-hand combat to get to the top spot — to get more likes, to have a consistent thing — you've got to do something that is really unique and real that can connect with an audience. It's going to be easy for people to be exposed that are playing games. People absorb and I think are learning the kind of fluid rules rather quickly. And if you're just not all there the air goes out of that balloon — if it doesn't just get popped and people are on to the next. The bar to be consistently dope at whatever it is has to be high. And I think it has to be real and kind of cultivated and thought-out, because the competition is just so brutal.
They say we don't have enough gatekeepers in hip-hop culture now.
Yeah, it's hard to have gatekeepers when there's so many gates. Gates are everywhere. But when you tap in with like-minded folks, the desire to get to the realness is definitely there. It's just finding it and then locking in. Tell-a-friend to tell-a-friend or send a link to the homie because he's on this frequency. That still happens. But it's just so much going on and changing rapidly as AI moves in and makes it harder to discern.
Here's what's interesting for me along the lines of this. I'm not really on TikTok that much, but I have a TikTok cause my daughter or her mom will see something and share it. So occasionally I move around and look at stuff. And what I'm now seeing and wasn't aware of is all these people DJing on TikTok. It used to be kind of goofy with the kids dancing. This whole algorithm thing figures out what you like and I'm seeing a lot of grown folks playing fly s***. Yo, I didn't know about this aspect of TikTok.
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