When Uptown Met Downtown

Fred Brathwaite in 1990.

Fred Brathwaite—better known as Fab 5 Freddy—bridged the worlds of punk and hip-hop, graffiti and high art

By Mark Rozzo

I first met Fred Brathwaite, the artist, filmmaker, television host, impresario, and all-around Renaissance man of hip-hop better known as Fab 5 Freddy, on June 7, 2023. New York was enveloped in a thick, noxious haze that day, thanks to smoke drifting from Canadian wildfires, the largest ever recorded in North America. The city’s air quality that day was labeled “hazardous,” the sun was a dull dot, and the sky was the color of St. Joseph aspirin for children.

I made my way through a smoky miasma that was allegedly Upper Manhattan to Fred’s Harlem town house for the first of a series of interviews for a READ ON