Fab Five Freddy

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Fab 5 Freddy
Tribeca Film Festival
Background information
Birth nameFred Brathwaite
Born (1959-08-31) August 31, 1959 (age 64)
OriginBedford–Stuyvesant, New York City, New York, U.S.[1]
GenresHip hop
Occupation(s)
  • Visual artist
  • filmmaker
  • musician
Years active1978–present

Fred Brathwaite (born August 31, 1959), more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and

No Wave art scene. He was immortalized in 1981 when Debbie Harry rapped on the Blondie song "Rapture" that "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." In the late 1980s, Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking hip-hop music video show Yo! MTV Raps.[2][3]

Career

In the late 1970s, Freddy became a member of the Brooklyn-based graffiti group the Fabulous 5, known for painting the entire side of

.

Freddy became a regular guest on

No Wave art scene. "I was bringing the whole music, hip-hop, art, break dancing, and urban cultural thing to the downtown table", he said.[7]

In late 1980, Glenn O'Brien cast Freddy, along with fellow Lower East Side graffiti writer Quiñones, in the film New York Beat (later released as Downtown 81). The film showcased artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in his Lower Manhattan environment and the culture that surrounded it. Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry also appeared in the film and in early 1981, Freddy made a cameo in the Blondie music video for "Rapture." As recounted in the 1999 TV documentary The Hip Hop Years, the "Rapture" video featured Freddy in a cameo role painting graffiti art in the background. (Grandmaster Flash, who was also name-checked in the song, did not show up on the day of the shoot, so Basquiat took his place behind the turntables). "Rapture" was the first hip hop video to be shown on MTV.

Freddy connected with New York underground filmmaker

Uptown, Manhattan, environment of the Bronx and the burgeoning hip-hop culture.[8]
The movie Wild Style, the first film to illustrate hip hop culture, grew from an idea Freddy had to refute the negative depiction of New York City's urban youth and to link for the first time break dancing, rapping, DJing and graffiti under one umbrella or branches from the same tree. Freddy created the film's original music, co-produced and ended up in one of the leading roles as the charismatic Bronx hip hop club promoter and former graffiti artist, Phade.

In April 1981, Freddy co-curated with

SoHo (not to be confused with Holman's Graffiti Rock
TV show pilot). The show was cancelled due to violence, but was rescheduled in October at another venue called The Kitchen.

After the Rock Steady Crew and Afrika Bambaataa were booked as the opening act for Bow Wow Wow at The Ritz nightclub in September 1981, Ruza Blue decided to book them at Negril and begin a night called "Wheels of Steel". That became so popular that it was closed down by the fire department for over-capacity, and Freddy helped Blue (whom he dubbed "Kool Lady Blue") find another home for the party. Together they chose The Roxy roller rink in NYC, which gained national fame once used in the film Beat Street (1984).[citation needed]

The A-side of the 1982 single "

turntablist Grand Mixer DXT, and has been used in over 750 hip-hop tracks since.[10]

Freddy's "Change the Beat" for Celluloid Records would also lead to four other records, including a song about graffiti painting by Futura 2000 with music performed by The Clash, and all were released together first in France and was soon followed by the first hip hop tour in Europe billed as "New York City Rap", in 1982.[citation needed] The tour consisted of DJ Afrika Bambaataa, Grand Mixer D.ST and the Infinity rappers, The Rock Steady Crew, Futura 2000, Dondi, Phase Two, Fab 5 Freddy, Rammellzee and the McDonald's double Dutch jump rope champs. They played 10 cities in France and did two shows in London. Although at that time no other American hip hop music had been released in France, that now legendary tour sparked the hip hop movement there and France still is the 2nd biggest market for hip hop music outside of America.[citation needed]

In 1983, Freddy produced a hip-hop version of "Eisgekühlter Bommerlunder" called "Hip Hop Bommi Bop" together with German punk rock band Die Toten Hosen which is said to be the very first co-production of Punk and Hip Hop.[citation needed]

In 1988, Freddy became the first hip hop

VJ by hosting the MTV music video show entitled Yo! MTV Raps. He later went on to be an associate producer on the 1991 film New Jack City in which he also made an appearance.[11] That year he was the subject of an extensive profile by Susan Orlean in The New Yorker which began with the sentence "The coolest person in New York at the moment is a man named Fred Brathwaite."[12] In 1994, he directed the music video "One Love" by rapper Nas.[13] In 2007, he played a murdered rap artist named Terrence 'Fulla T' Smith on the TV series "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" in the episode "Flipped". The same year, he made a small cameo in the film American Gangster directed by Ridley Scott. In 2008, he appears as a special wedding guest in the film Rachel Getting Married, along with other notable musicians, as conceived by producer Jonathan Demme to enhance the expansive and varied soundtrack and wedding members, in contrast with the normal duality of a traditional wedding.[14] In 2016, he played the role of Atticus Howard in "Mob Rules" the fourth episode of the seventh season of the CBS police procedural drama Blue Bloods.[15]

On August 11, 2017, an animated version of Freddy appeared in a Google Doodle as a narrator, which observed the 44th anniversary of DJ Kool Herc's pioneering use of the hip-hop break.[16]

In 2019, coinciding with the release of his Netflix film Grass Is Greener,[17] Freddy served as creative director for the full-size hip hop photography and culture exhibit entitled, Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop,[18] based on the 2018 book of the same name created and written by Vikki Tobak (published by Clarkson Potter). The exhibit was hosted by The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. In the months before and during the exhibition Fab 5 Freddy served on several group discussion and lecture panels regarding the show.[19][20][21]

References

  1. Allmusic
    . Retrieved March 5, 2016.
  2. ISSN 0028-792X
    . Retrieved 2019-06-13.
  3. ^ "Fab 5 Freddy and the Rise of Street Art in Fine Art". Birth Of Hip Hop. 29 October 2019.
  4. ^ "Picture of Campbell Soup Cans train with his tag" (JPG). At149st.com. 1980.
  5. OCLC 972429558
    .
  6. .
  7. ^ "Rapping with Fab 5 Freddy" [interview] in Deitch, O'Brien and Cortez, Jean-Michel Basquiat 1981. Milan: Charta, 2007, page 119.
  8. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2021-07-17.
  9. ^ Mosset, Olivier; Brathwaite, Fred. "Clinton Street", Bomb, Fall, 1982. Retrieved on March 6, 2013
  10. ^ "Tracks that Sampled Fab 5 Freddy". Whosampled.com. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  11. ^ "New Jack City (1991)". IMDb.com.
  12. ^ "Fab Five Freddy, the Coolest Person in New York". The New Yorker. 10 June 1991.
  13. ^ "Fab 5 Freddy". IMDb.
  14. ^ "Rachel Getting Married". Sonyclassics.com. Retrieved 2011-01-29.
  15. ^ "Listings - TheFutonCritic.com - The Web's Best Television Resource". Thefutoncritic.com.
  16. ^ "Hip-hop history: Google creates epic musical Doodle to kick off 44th birthday jam". Washingtonpost.com. 2017-08-11. Retrieved 2017-08-12.
  17. ^ Ramos, Dino-Ray (15 April 2019). "'Grass Is Greener' Trailer: Netflix Docu Is Lit With Facts About America's Relationship With Cannabis". Deadline.com.
  18. ^ Froelich, Paula (4 April 2019). "A stark, new exhibit at the Annenberg take us on a visual historical journey of Hip-Hop". Newsweek.com.
  19. ^ "Contact High: A visual history of hip-hop". UCalendar.usc.edu.
  20. ^ "Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop: Book Talk, Panel Discussion, and Signing featuring Chuck D and special guests - The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts". Kennedy-center.org.
  21. ^ "CONTACT HIGH Summer Film Series at Delicious Pizza Presents". Annenbergphotospace.org.

External links