Everybody's Fly

A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture

De: Fab 5 Freddy, Mark Rozzo

Narrado por: Fab 5 Freddy

Named a Must-Read Book by W Magazine, Time, and more

“Everybody’s Fly could comfortably sit alongside books by Richard Price, Lucy Sante, Tom Wolfe, or Ed McBain, chronicling New York from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s with both vivid, journalistic descriptions and the outsized flair from a person who was at the center of it all.”
—Rolling Stone

An electrifying memoir from the pioneering cultural icon The New Yorker called “the coolest person in New York,” whose fearless creativity reshaped the worlds of art, music, and style

Audiobook includes exclusive conversations with Grandmaster Flash, Michael Holman, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein (Blondie), Charlie Ahearn, Lee Quiñones, Q-Tip (A Tribe Called Quest), and Futura

Fab 5 Freddy doesn’t just have a great story—he is the story. Name a seismic cultural shift, and chances are, he wasn’t just there—he was helping to make it happen. He’s among the first graffiti artists to turn subway tags into fine art, the visionary behind the first hip-hop movie, the bridge between Jean-Michel Basquiat and the downtown new wave scene, the first person to take rap global on MTV, and the opening rhyme of Blondie’s number-one smash hit “Rapture”—“Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody’s fly”—the song that propelled hip-hop from the New York streets to mainstream culture. With a spirit of joyful creativity and a deep capacity for connecting with kindred spirits (Basquiat, Haring, Lee, Flash, Warhol, and the Clash, to name a few), he shattered racial and artistic boundaries, bridging worlds and raising underground movements to pop culture dominance.

Everybody’s Fly is a fast-moving, all-access pass to Fred’s extraordinary life—one that begins in a book- and jazz-filled Brooklyn home and takes us deep into New York’s creative explosions from the 1970s into the 1990s. He didn’t just shape culture, he synthesized it—from highbrow to street, the Bronx to the East Village, punk to rap, Warhol to Wild Style. Whether he’s skipping school to wander New York City’s museums, painting subway cars that became moving masterpieces, or bringing hip-hop to downtown clubs for the first time, Fred’s genius has always been in seeing what others couldn’t—until he made them see it too.

Vibrant, rhapsodic, and compulsively readable, Everybody’s Fly is at once an intimate memoir and panoramic cultural history. It is a love letter to the art of seeing, a fascinating account of an inimitable creative life, and a celebration of what it means to shape culture.

Amazing time capsule

Fred telling his own story is simply the best! Do not skip the interviews.

Hip hop forever

The best book I read this year. I could see hear and feel New York at that time! Well done. Fab is a cultural icon who should be celebrated

The Art of Storytelling

No one tells it like Fab 5 Freddy! This book paints such an incredible picture ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hip-Hop! Don't Stop!

Born in '69 in Jersey 15 miles exactly west of Manhattan under the influence and airways of the Big Apple I heard and saw Soul & Jazz & Disco & Club & Reggae merge with the beautiful struggle to define the post Civil Rights Movement rebellious youth culture that has now changed the world for over and over and over again for 50+ years. My parents were in aviation and on numerous drives to LGA & JFK as well on many days and nights spent in The City there was just something in the air and on the walls. It was in the bop and exuberant confidence of self expression and the new Knowledge of Self. We were in the midst of something hot new dangerous sexy rough rugged and modern. An exposition in waves of art dance music fashion ways of speaking and postures.

Been a fan since Momz took me to see Wild Style in the old Times Square theater and downtown to the Funhouse gallery. So many memories!

There I go. There I go. There I go 'Everybody's Fly's'... is the soul that snaps my control!!