Fab Five Freddy
1959– · American visual artist, filmmaker and hip-hop pioneer
Fred Brathwaite, known as Fab 5 Freddy (born 1959), is an American visual artist, filmmaker and television personality, regarded as one of the architects of the street art movement. He is best known for bridging the uptown rap and graffiti scene of the Bronx and the downtown underground art world of New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In the late 1970s he belonged to the Brooklyn graffiti group the Fabulous 5, known for painting entire New York subway cars. Together with Lee Quiñones he moved from street graffiti toward the art world, and in 1979 both exhibited at the Galleria LaMedusa in Rome. He appeared in the film Downtown 81 alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat, and in 1981 made a brief cameo in the Blondie video for "Rapture", whose lyric names him. That year he also helped shape Wild Style, one of the first films about hip-hop culture, in which he acted.
In 1988 he became the first host of Yo! MTV Raps, the pioneering hip-hop video show. He then worked as an associate producer on New Jack City and directed the video for Nas's "One Love" in 1994, while continuing to act in television and film.
His legacy lies in helping establish hip-hop and graffiti as serious artistic expressions. In 2026 he published his memoir, Everybody's Fly: A Life of Art, Music and Changing the Culture, written with Mark Rozzo.