When Blondie declared 45 years ago that “Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody’s fly” in their hit song “Rapture,” they introduced the world to the pioneering cultural icon Fred Brathwaite, also known as Fab 5 Freddy. His creativity reshaped the worlds of art, style, and music. He’s the graffiti artist who turned subway tags into fine art, showing his work most recently at the Saatchi Gallery in London; the visionary behind Wild Style, the first hip-hop movie, and countless music videos; the bridge between Jean-Michel Basquiat and the downtown punk scene; and the first person to take rap global on MTV.

Join Fab 5 Freddy for a special Cooper Union Gardiner Foundation Great Hall Forum event celebrating the release of his first memoir, Everybody’s Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture. It is an essential, street-level cultural history into how New York’s underground art and music scene—guided by Fab 5 Freddy’s singular vision of what could be possible—irrevocably transformed mainstream culture from the late 1970s to today.

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