Fred Brathwaite — known everywhere as Fab Five Freddy — grew up in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, in a household steeped in books and jazz. He came of age in a New York City hollowed out by poverty and arson, where teenagers in the Bronx were responding to their surroundings by making music and marking the walls around them. Brathwaite became one of the first graffiti artists to move from the subway system into downtown galleries, showing alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Futura at a moment when those worlds had never overlapped.
His new memoir, “Everybody’s Fly,” published March 10, traces that journey and the decades that followed, from scoring the feature film “Wild Style” and hosting Yo! MTV Raps to making documentary films and building a cannabis brand rooted in criminal justice advocacy.
In a conversation with WABE, Brathwaite reflected on what it meant to go back.
Read this story now for free
To continue reading, sign up for our newsletter and get unlimited access to WABE.org
You can select your preferences for news and local content. We will never share your email address. Learn how your newsletter sign-up will support WABE and Public Media
