Street-art and hip-hop pioneer, Fred Brathwaite, aka Fab 5 Freddy, is a cultural influencer whose career encompasses graffiti artist, rapper, an internationally exhibited painter, video and TV-commercial director, screenwriter, film scorer, actor, lecturer, television personality, and creative director of museum exhibits.

Along with friends and contemporaries, Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Lee Quinones and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Fab was a key player in New York’s 1980’s downtown cultural scene instrumental in elevating graffiti into a disruptive movement that would eventually give birth to street art. In addition to his visual art, Fab directed numerous hip-hop music videos and he was the original host of YO! MTV Raps, the groundbreaking TV show that accelerated hip-hop culture globally.

In 2019, a feature length documentary Fab produced and directed for Netflix titled, “Grass is Greener” was released examining the history of cannabis, music and criminal justice in America. Inspired by the documentary, he launched a social equity cannabis brand in 2021 called, B Noble, named for Bernard Noble, who was arrested in Louisiana and sentenced to 13 years of hard labor for possessing the equivalent of two joints.

In this episode, Fab and host, Brad Johnson, discuss his childhood memories and the influence of his father and bebop jazz musician friends’ civil rights conversations, his exposure to fine art, and his quest to find a way for his ideas in the music and art worlds. Discussing more recent activity, we learn about Fab’s cannabis brand, B Noble as well as his role as Creative Director of Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop at Museum of Pop Culture (MoPop).

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