Yo! The Afterparty!

Fab 5 Freddy

Fab 5 Freddy emerged in the late 1970’s as a New York City graffiti artist, becoming one of the first to exhibit his paintings internationally. Along with contemporaries Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Rammellzee, Lee Quionones and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Fab was a key player in New York’s 1980’s downtown cultural scene, elevating graffiti into a disruptive movement that would eventually give birth to street art.

His introduction to pop culture came courtesy of a name check on new wave group Blondie’s 1980’s pop hit, “Rapture”, which became the first disco rap song to go to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Freddy, Lee, and Basquiat make cameos in the music video. Alongside Debbie Harry, he would go on to do a Christmas version of the song later that year called “Yuletide Throwdown”, released strictly as a flexi disc in a UK magazine.

In addition to his visual art, Fab co-produced, starred in, and composed the music for hip hop’s first documentary, Wild Style (1983) and also was the first hip hop artist to perform in Japan to promote the same film. He was part of the first European tour called “The New York City Rap Tour” months earlier in November 1982. His 1982 single “Change The Beat” was a cult classic, providing the vocoder soundbite “Ahh, this stuff is really fresh” later scratched for in Herbie Hancock’s – “Rockit” to over 3000 other songs. This led to him working with The Clash and Futura 2000 on the single “Escapades Of Futura 2000”.

In 1988, in what’s arguably his most well known role, he became the first hip hop VJ, hosting “Yo?! MTV Raps”, the ground-breaking TV show that took hip hop culture globally. He went on to direct music videos for BDP-“My Philosophy”, EPMD- “Strictly Business”, Queen Latifah – “Ladies First”, Gang Starr – “Just To Get A Rep”, Brand Nubian “Wake Up”, Snoop-“Who Am I”, and Nas- “One Love”.