The Questlove Show - Fab 5 Freddy Part 1

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Hip-Hop visionary Fab 5 Freddy joins Questlove to trace his path from Bed-Stuy's Hancock Street to painting whole-car subway masterpieces, exhibiting in Rome, and helping bring Rap to the mainstream through Yo! MTV Raps. While discussing his new memoir, Everybody's Fly, Fred shares vivid memories of Brooklyn riots, preserving Malcolm X’s final speech on reel-to-reel tape, and even cold-calling Thelonious Monk as a kid. Freddy unpacks Brooklyn’s mobile disco scene, the origins of sound system culture, and how graffiti crews transformed subway cars into rolling art galleries. Along the way, he and Questlove swap stories about boomboxes, gritty ’70s New York, and the tapes, block parties, and community networks that laid the groundwork for Hip-Hop culture.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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What can I say our guest today is a personal, personal hero of mine. He taught me the power of creative aisle crossing. I learned never to burn a bridge because you never know you're going to need in your journey in life. He taught me the power of being a Renaissance person. He taught me the power of, speaking of bridges, being a bridge, like connecting people from all walks of life. And I guess through him, I learned that hip hop is really, it's an art form. And we need to hold it up as such. Of course, he's ubiquitous.

You may know him too. If you're a New York resident of a certain era, of course, you might have seen his legendary tags or his pieces on trains. If you were lucky enough, he was the first person to get a shout out on hip hop's first number one rap single. Not to mention, he was instrumental in really bringing hip hop to the world, be it first time that I got to see an actual authentic representation of it. if you saw Charlie A. Hearn's wild-style movie, not to mention the platinum-plus flooding of a lot of our classic era hip-hop artists through a vehicle called Yo and TV Raps. We would have never have heard of Jazzy Jeff for the Fresh Prince or NWA or Public Enemy

or Queen Latifah or Tribe or any of those pioneering groups that inspired us to go on. and he has a new book called Everybody's Fly, and it gives astonishing detail about his life on Hancock Street in Brooklyn. What can I say? The flies of them all, Fab Five Freddy. Dude, the way that Tarik and I would dream, like, all right, so, you know, I'm big on like manifesting and all that woo-woo manifesting thing. Yeah.

And I would say that there's always two scenarios that Tarika and and I in our journey, you know, it was like a seven-year journey from high school to like when we first started busking on the street corners. Right. And the first one is always what I call well-Turich. And there will always be something like, well, Tariq, man, we just finished a four-month run of like Indian Africa going on. We laughed.

Like we'd be on the bus coming home from our insurance jobs. But like, it was always a well-Turik moment. And the other one, Tariq's version was always, ha, yeah. We live here on the 52 bus. at 52nd and Spruce Street with the one and only Quest Love. And like, he would pretend he was you. And like, I guess the whole thing was like, you know, maybe one day, we could be on your MTV reps.

And to talk to you now in this setting. One is ironic that I'm interviewing you. Yeah, it's perfect. It's amazing. Yeah, that's so true. I feel like this is going to be a very, this will be a Terry Gross question. Aha. Okay.

What is Fly and who came up with that term? Wow. Well, you know, before it was, I think, you could probably safely say popularized in the hip-hop space. Very early hip-hop space in the Boogie Down Bronx. There was a great movie, Blacksploitation, although I'm not always crazy about that term, but Super Fly. So Fly was just a term that meant, you know, you was cool, you had your gear right, you looked right, you stepped right. And so in early hip hop, fly guys and fly girls was the way the participants were referenced. And so it kind of was sort of amplified in that space. And then in explaining to Chris Stein and Debbie Harry, the nucleus of Blondie, what was going on, what this scene was about, how it had its own slang and its own look and its own feel and sound. And they kind of took it for me, put it on their record, and now I put it on the cover of my book as a title. As you should. Yeah.

You have one of the more colorful alliteration names, Fat Five Freddy. Yeah. Can you give me the history of how that moniker landed with you? Yeah, sure. Well, you know, when I became a part of a group of graffiti writers that were legendary, call the Fabulous Five, short the Fab Five, I became like, let's say the final member to join, if you will. But my mission, when I connected with Lee Cignoness, who was the premier member of that group,

as just outstanding painter, muralist, if you will. When I became a part of that, I would tag up, you know, Fred, and then Fab Five, Fabulous Five, probably, you know, just to tag Fab Five, and that became, as just morphed itself into Fab Five, Freddie. So before you came, were they the Fabulous Four? No, they were the Fab Five. five, there were, I guess, at different times, probably more than five.

Okay. It was just a cool thing, probably inspired by the Beatles to a certain extent, but probably even more so the kind of influence of comics, and you had the Fantastic Four, and so there was like that superhero influence, which I guess influenced a lot of graffiti people as well as hip-hop people. So it kind of was a popular thing, you know, the treacherous three. Fantastic for the four, the three, the two. Right.

What year is this when the fabulous... Well, the fabulous vibe as a graffiti crew, they were strong through the 70s, and they became known for painting whole car murals. And they were just outstanding. And Lee, like I said, Lee Cignonas was the premier member. So they were renowned for that. But it was seeing Lee's work, particularly a mural he had did in the Lower East Side at 56 Park on Madison Street. He was the first guy to paint like an entire handball court as opposed to the like, you know, to the format of painting a train,

which was kind of a long horizontal. He painted this huge kind of not a square, but kind of thing, which was outstanding. And when I saw that work and he had written up in the upper corner, graffiti is an art, and if art is a crime, let God forgive all, the fact that he was aware, This was an art, and it clicked with ideas I had that pop artists had been inspired by similar things that had inspired graffiti as it really developed into a way to make pictures and really tell stories with the imagery. And I had a feeling like we could move from the subway street space into an art space.

I shared these ideas with Lee, and we became a team, and hence I became a part of the group. I got with the original members, broke down what my plans were. They was like, go with it, baby, and I went with it. All right. So you lived in New York City at various transitions. I want to ask you about each period. So the first 10 years of your life, which I could say is the 60s. Yeah.

What is your happiest memory of 1960s, New York? Like, what is a great day? What's happening? A great day was, you know, playing in the street. I did all that classic New York street. stuff. We played all kind of games on the sidewalk. What was your main game? Some

games were somewhat seasonal because when it warmed up you could play. It was a game called Skeli. Is that street pool? Where you take a top and you... Kind of similar to street pool if you will. You had a kind of a diagram you would draw with little corners and squares.

One through 13 would be in the middle. You'd take a cap and sometimes people would put tar in it or take a glass. and there's a way you could break the top off a glass. So the whole idea is you would shoot your projectile on this little field, so to speak, and you could knock somebody out.

You'd go from one, and then you went to 13. That was really popular. We called a tops in Philly. Interesting. But we used to always get in trouble for stealing the red tops off of milk bottles. And all night, like free put them in the freezer so they would have good traction.

Well, okay, very similar. Philly in New York City. I like to sometimes consider Philly the six-battle rule. It is. Because it was so connected culturally, aesthetically, early graffiti, cornbread. I'm sure you know about it. So, yeah, that was just playing in the street was the litany of games we had, whether it was Skelly, you know, all kind of games you play,

but a little pink ball, which was Spaldean was a popular brand, punchball, handball, Chinese handball, you know, it was a bunch of games. games that we played. And that's how we played. That was the fun we had. Johnny on the pony, kicked the can. Red light, green light, one, two, three, Coke, Alivio or Ringolivio. If you guys from that era in New York, you remember. So that was fun, basically, essentially. All right. So I also know that you had different experiences than, say, your peers or your friends, or at least I like to think so. Yeah, very different. Like, in the first 10 years of your life, what is a memory that you experienced that was just like unique to you. And did you realize like how different your life

was than say your neighbors or your cousins or whoever is in your age group? It's interesting. I didn't think of it as being that different. As I grew older and began to reflect, I realized, oh my goodness, what an incredible household. What an amazing things going on that my dad was connected to that rubbed off on me and stuff like that. So I guess, you know, something that I get into in the book early on, my dad was very connected and conscious with trying to find a better way for us as a people specifically. So he was reading everything he could read. He was listening, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, you know, as African countries are gaining their liberation, I guess, in the 60s and even prior. He was super dialed into all of that. And there was one

incident that I get into really dramatic. It happened. It was the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. My dad, he had an old 1957 Chevy and a couple of his friends. We got in a car to go to the Brownsville section, different parts of the city, Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Ocean Hill Brownsville. There were people were in a rage. There were fires going on. We at first went up on the roof and we looked out because he heard there was fire here. It was fire here. And we could see the glow of these fires in the distance. My father was connected to a, like a community organization in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. He said, let's go over there to make sure to try to keep it.

Okay, because I was like, my dad would have been like, stay your ass in the house. Yeah, but they were very involved in the community. Okay. And Brownsville, which is still one of the livest, edgiest parts of Brooklyn. And we went out there. And while we were driving there, we were waiting at a light. I want to say on Troy, right at the intersection,

before we make a left on Atlantic. while sitting there at a red light, I happened to glance to my right, and there was a middle-aged white man running furiously right at us, and I'm like, what's going on? And before I knew it, this man had opened the car and jumped in and literally, like, practically sat on top of me,

and right as he jumped in, it was a huge bang on the hood of a car. These black guys were chasing this man. They were enraged that Martin Luther King had been killed. This man, I do believe, would have likely had been killed. if not beating really badly. He jumped in the car. My dad jumped out, scolded those guys

because they'd bang the car. He screamed. This man is not our enemy. This man is not our enemy. I was terrified. And then we drove this man to the local police station not far on Utica Avenue,

the 77 precinct. My dad was like, don't let them let you leave on your own. Make sure they took. He was an Atlantic Avenue the Long Island Railroad ran. And he was working at some, whatever it was, I don't know, but he was walking to a stop on the Long Island Railroad,

not aware what was going on in the community, maybe not even aware Martin Luther King had been assassinated that day. So it was a traumatic, terrifying experience, but I remembered how my dad did the right thing, took this man to the precinct and dropped him off and made sure he said, don't let you leave here on your own, make sure they drop you off at the train station.

Right. that's one of those things you never forget you know and um so okay like my childhood we had communities and i think i was like the last generation of like the free lunch program from the panthers and whatnot when did that wane off like when did anyone carry that oron after your father or did he just do it what do you mean as far as like community organization and what is that entitled as far as like community organizations well you know my dad was connected there were a lot of people that had become activists of sorts

that were involved in very, because I guess a part of what happened, I guess, with all the, during the Johnson administration, there was a lot of money that went into the communities to kind of write some of the wrongs to give some, it was,

there were like anti-poverty programs, if you will. So my dad was connected with different guys that were involved in these community activities to get people jobs and employment. So he was just dialed in. And our house was sort of like an interesting part of also my growing up was because my dad had consumed so much knowledge and he was kind of really up to the minute plus his jazz connections. There was at least four days out of every week. There was a group of guys that would

gather in the basement of our house to talk, discuss, stay up to the minute on what was going on as change was happening and the Black Panthers were coming and all this stuff was going on. So he was super tied in. So that was also something that went on constantly as a youth. And I would pick up pieces and snippets. As you probably know, Max Roach, the great Bebob jazz drummer, was my dad's childhood friend. He was my godfather. And so those, my dad would be in his ear. They were all very concerned about all of these issues going on. That was something that was very prescient at that time. And some, stuff that I picked up on didn't realize how much it affected me. but it did have an effect on the moves I would make, controlling the narrative.

Your community organizer. You're a hip-hop community organizer. Yeah, you know, my earliest aspiration as a young kid was to be an architect, which didn't work out. But I think in terms of what I've been able to have my hands on culturally, I feel it's the type of architecture in terms of building and controlling the narrative was a key thing for me and whatever I did because I would pick up snippets of their conversations that they want. wanted to run labels. They guys were incredibly intelligent, superworldly, but when you think of the dynamics of that time, their hands were tied, if you will,

in terms of what one could and could not do. I used to hear stories about Charlie Mingus wanting to start a label. One of my dad's close friends was close with Mingus. He wanted to have a label. But those things weren't always, they weren't able to happen in the way people had desired

and they were frustrated. And, you know, I always had it in my mind to, you know, whatever I put together, I want to be able to control that narrative or make sure I can direct what that narrative would be. Do you think that maybe subconsciously you figured out the key to that sort of access is the power of connecting? Like, hey, let me meet this person. Let me go to this part of town and see what's sitting here. Let me. Yeah.

Somewhat, I didn't look at it like that. but I did think in terms of, I had a slight understanding of how one gets a bill passed through Congress. You have to lobby and connect and convince. So I had a rough understanding. It wasn't clearly defined. But reaching out and being able to communicate with whoever was there was something I was determined to do. And I guess what really got that moving for me was specifically seeing the beginning. beginnings of the punk rock new wave kind of revolution, if you will.

I remember there was a page two or three story in the New York Times. Luckily, my dad read everything, had always had all kind of publications. And reading about the sex pistols and how shocking that was, you know, coming at the Queen of England and what they were talking about was like really heavy stuff. And I began to look at some of what was going on around that. Right. And as I'm developing ideas about this graffiti as art, this new music, how to bring this all together and present as one, I figured those people seem wild and crazy enough. If I can connect, I might be able to get an audience with some of these people to share these ideas, which nobody was embracing or there was no love for any of this at the time.

So you were an army of one? I was an army of one for sure. And yeah, so that would be key in terms of meeting people that I guess it did, I did connect, but it wasn't a specific thing. I want to make all these connections. I was just trying to get people to listen to my story, understand this crazy idea I had. And I was embraced and immediately found a lot of support from people in that new wave space and that got things really moving aggressively, if you will, in retrospect.

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Wow. Listen to learning to be human on IHard Radio, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. What was the first act of creativity that you part took in? What was your first creative project? Well, besides me and a kid having art in school, whether it was finger painting in the single digit years of school, That was always a fun thing to do But I guess it was really I did have a brief gig

Designing the imagery For these kind of candles That would be sold And that people would pray on And you'd have these candles Like Lucky 13 People would have these things To hit you a number

Or to bring good luck, goodwill You designed the multicolored candles And stuff I designed the image that would go on the glass The sticker. The sticker. Well, it was like a good. Well, nowadays there's prints and Drake and Madonna and someone showed one with my face on it.

So you, those stickers that would go on those candles? Kind of the, it wasn't quite a sticker, but the imagery that would get printed. It would kind of turn it into like a screen, a one color print. Okay. That would be printed on the glass. So that was kind of like a first real kind of hired to do art type of thing. A buddy of mine turned me on to that, a kid across the street from me. on Hancock Street and Bestai.

And I did a bunch of those. So I was like when I was like, oh my God, I was hired to do art. But really, I guess from there, the more serious thing was when I connected with Lee Cignonas, became a part of the Fab Five, my mission to elevate this work into a kind of art gallery, museum, find people that really understood art to look at us. And that all came from the connections I made with people on the new wave scene, particularly Glenn O'Brien advised me to, you need to get some publicity. And the first publicity came in the Village Voice newspaper, a piece on myself and what Lee and I were trying to do.

And that piece had my home phone number. You could reach out to us. We would paint a mural, we would on your wall or whatever at $5.000 square foot. Damn. And that was all pin. And the phone started ringing. $5,000 square foot? Yeah, we figured, you know.

Now it's $500,000. Easily, right? God. But we did get a few commissions came in, a few people hired us to come and spray paint a wall, you know. We did a few walls. But out of that, an Italian art dealer from a very prestigious gallery in Rome, the gallery of La Medusa, reached out and wanted to acquire some work, engaged with us. He saw we were cool. He had similar ideas that he would come.

It's a very prestigious dealer, and he had homes all over the world. but when he would come to New York, he'd ride the train, and he was fascinated. And so he basically offered us an exhibit at this gallery in Rome, and that really was beyond expectation, and it really got the ball rolling for what we wanted to do as artists. And then it kind of opened the door for other people from that same space that we kind of pulled in to get down with this. That included Futura, Crash, Days, Pink.

And so it was a lot that happened in a miraculous way, but that was a key thing that said it all. I had also had recently become friends with Jean-Michel Bosquiat, and he was just like me, same age. We were both trying to make similar moves in that space. And he was just, oh, my God, it's just super exciting. And that really was a big moment. I really detail that thoroughly in the book. What year was this in Italy? 79.

And you enjoyed it? Oh, man. I get mad when people, my experience of Italy was kind of the opposite. Oh, boy. It was not enjoyable. But also, like, just being a broke, we were broke musicians living in Europe.

It's not like, oh, we go on tour. In order for us, you got to understand, like, we were one of maybe eight black bands that still had a record deal. Wow. Like, the black band was a non-existent thing, You know, hip hop sort of washed everything away. Yeah.

So we had to move to Europe. We, like, stole our budget money. Oh. Got an apartment in London. And we would just spend a month in each country. Let's go to France for a month. Let's go to Italy. And Italy, man, just every night, man, like, they thought we were part of this African cartel.

We do our laundry. And then their version of the FBI come in, we see your IDs. Like, every night it was anything that's ever happened. in like riots at shows or problems with police. They would come and hassle you guys. Only in Italy. Like we finally, I think maybe in 2005, had a good experience there.

And so since then I've changed my mind about it, but to be broke in the summer of Italy, I hated every moment of it. So when people like talk all romantic about, oh, it was amazing. And we were just like depressed, so. Yeah, we had a much better experience, I guess, I guess the context of what we were doing.

We basically, you know, we were basically there for this exhibit. And I had been reading about the Red Brigade. This was a militant, Italian terror group, if you will, that were doing this thing that people reference it now as, you know, it was called kneecapping. And they were shooting officials in the knees. They would ride by and spraying these guys' knees. and then they would write graffiti, the red brigade,

and they were like a radical thing against the, it was, it was like a political activism. Political terror group, if you would have had people shook to their core. So me seeing stories and photos, you know. Anyway, go ahead. No, I said. What an idea. Yeah, trust me, people, when you hear the term kneecapping now, that's where it originates. Wow.

It was like kneecapning. It was a big thing. But because the graffiti connection, whenever you'd see a story about it, they would show the spray painting around. I thought, oh, well, graffiti in Rome is a radical kind of thing. Maybe if they hear about what we're doing, these guys may want to show up and check our workout or something to that effect. When we had the exhibit at, and I realized that this guy was a real upper crust,

Italian and the people that came to our opening included the chairman of Fiat, Johnny Agnelli, and contested this, contested that. I was like, boy, these are the kind of people that could be targets. They were getting kneecapped. Right. Red Vigay. They could be some kneecap candidates here. But essentially, we just went on me and Lee, man, late at night, wandering the streets of Rome.

Of course, I have my boombox with me. I'm blasting early rap tapes. And we just would wander the streets of Rome, turn the corner. There's, oh, there's remnants of a monument. You'd walk through the city of Rome. So we just had it a delight. We climbed over a fence of the Coliseum and sat on the last remaining steps in the Coliseum, which was like two kids from New York City, just what are we doing here?

At that time, there were feral cats, hundreds of them that ran all over the Coliseum in Rome. I ran into Fellini on the street. Wait, what? Fulini lived, we were staying in what's called the pensioni, which was like a super cheap joint. And our dealer lived in this area

on Via Maguta. And Falini lived up the street. And so helped me. I'm walking in the street. And there's Mr. Felini. I stopped. I chatted with him briefly. He had the classic hat on. And so it was like a pretty memorable What is it about you that has no fear? Because even in your book, you are speaking of, like, I live in an era of New York where it has to be something worth it to get on the train.

And, you know, Manhattan people are like, uh-uh, I don't do Brooklyn. I don't do Queens. I'll be like, yo, there's mad restaurants in Queens. Let's go to Queens one night. Really great. Yes. I don't do, literally you are the embodiment of like. When people ask me, like, what's your advice or whatever?

It's very simple. Show up. See what happens. Show up. And you'll be shocked at the amount of times where people talk themselves out of their destiny. Because they've already painted their head. Nah, I don't want to do that. Something might happen.

Because in my mind, I'm like, you're from real New York. I'm in now a pampered New York. And even then, you know, my first thought is, who always? going to be there. Yeah, yeah. I'm good. I'm in the same way. No, but I'm saying like, one, you're an army of one.

So was there never not a concern? I should find out about this neighborhood I'm going to before. Oh, come on. And that, well, regarding that, moving through the city, definitely you had to be aware and cautious. So my street senses would kick in. Like, even though I was reading and, had like an intelligent nerd side to me.

I ran with the best of the worst in the hood. Like my parents didn't really. How'd you get their respect? Just being real. Like if you had to knuckle up, I was ready. You know what I'm saying? You know, I got bullied like a lot of kids did. But at a certain point, kid bullying me,

I just called turned off and knocked his head off, knocked his block. Everybody went crazy. And that at least would let people know, like, yo, you don't mess with him. You know what I'm saying? So I was able to move. with some kids that was pretty wild.

Did you have cousins or brothers or anything? No, I was the only child for most of that time. I have a younger sister. But, you know. But nothing strikes the fear in someone, especially in the 70s. Yeah. Now, I'm going to get my brother to fuck you up.

Yeah, yeah, no, that was real. But, like, I just navigated it in a way you learned, you got bullied, you got picked on. But you learned to haul off and knock a kid upside his head and other kids realize, yo, you don't want to mess with him. because he'll knuckle up. And so you get a certain level of respect at that level like on some jungle shit.

And then, you know, we would travel. I'm from the era like we would hitch buses. We ride the back of butt. We did wild crazy shit at my era. I did, I put my feet in those waters to a certain extent. So when we traveled through certain areas of Brooklyn to go to swimming pools and like in Red Hook or wherever we were we was going,

some neighborhoods you'd move through, cast would step to you and be like, yo, what's up? You know, all right, well, fight so and so over here. You had to, yeah, it would be crazy. Wait, what? Yeah, and like, you come. That was how you got. Sometimes you be in a rough neighborhood.

Kids would step to you, B, so understanding what a rough neighborhood is, sometimes if you're moving, you come to a corner and you look down a block, but, yo, it's just, it looked wild over here, or you wouldn't go through projects unless you really knew somebody like a housing project, you'd navigate around that. So your instincts would get developed to a certain point where you can feel an energy when you come to a certain location. That's New York, especially in the summer. Heads are going to be out and they're going to be on a stoop.

They're going to be in the parks and you can feel that so you would avoid certain... Where would you never go in 1970s, New York? Like I said, if you knew it was crazy over here, you had to move with a certain level of caution, you know, that's how it was. But is there a part of New York that you would, mm-mm, I'm good. Certain parts of Brownsville, it was roughs. Fort Green would be kind of rough, you know,

if you, in certain areas in them hoods, dudes would step to you. Right. Because, you know, they'd be like, yo, what you're doing around here? Like, what's up? Yo, these kids don't look, you know, whatever, what's happening? So you find a lot of early beefs would stem from just being in the wrong part of town, or if you

was dating a girl or in the, chick lived here. That could be problematic. You know, it was ignorant stuff when you grow up a little bit. Right. But, you know, you learn how to navigate, how to make moves, where to go, and where not to go. That was New York back then. Because, you know, actually, people didn't move, travel too much out of their particular safe zones. And if you did, you move with a certain, listen, the stick up kid thing was real. And in Brooklyn, that was a major occupation, like a hustle. Like I directed, one of the many videos I directed was for Gangstar

for Just to Get a Rep, which was all about that Stick Up Kid, You know, when Raq Kim won in his early record, Turn Stick Up, you know, on the messes, turn Stick Up Kid, Look what you done, did. Yeah, got sent up for, this was a thing, so you had to know how to move because they'd be waiting for you at certain places. Like when kids had their summer jobs and you get paid,

everybody got paid on a certain day, your, Stick Up Kids would be out. You'd be going to the Lancy Street, you know, to get a new outfit. Stick up kids to be there. Yo, give me all that, running. You know what I'm saying? You know, that MOP energy completely encapsulated what it was like. When I hear that, you know, those certain records, certain rappers was able to really encapsulate what it was at those times.

And you just had to learn how to navigate that or to deal with it, you know. You have to knuckle up. You have to knuckle up. What was your household record collection like? Well, my parents had, that's an interesting story, which I also talk about in the book. So my parents had a bunch of albums, not a massive amount, but it was a lot of jazz records.

And as a young kid, I'm so sad about this, I destroyed a lot of the collection, trying to stack the albums up in interesting ways, building things, records would roll out of the covers and be, you know. Yeah. You know, so those things, I damaged a bunch of records, But so those are the records that were in the house primarily.

My mom would be into a lot of the contemporary stuff, which would primarily be on 45s. So you'd have the classic scenario, which I've been explaining a lot as I've been on a book tour, before the idea of a DJ mixing, which was just before hip-hop, way before hip-hop, just the idea of keeping the music going was a huge innovation and a revelation. Because typically you'd put a stack of 45,

on the spindle. The arm would swing back. It would drop a record. The arm would play the record. The original shuffle. Okay, the original shuffle. That's how parties were. That's how you listen to music.

That's how music was enjoyed in the home. And so, yeah. So my mom had some of the contemporary stuff and she would give me 15, 20 cent, a quarter to show her the latest dances, you know, whatever the move. Come here, boy. Are you getting called out of a do the dance? Do the robot.

You know, yeah, do the wobble, do the whatever, the jerk, whatever, you know, so I would do that. You the entertainment. Yeah, but so basically my mom was into that, and one of the earliest records that I remember that I went, because I damaged the copy my mother on, was a record called the Name Game by Shirley Ellis. Oh, Anna, Annabobo, Benna, Banana Fan. Yes, which is sort of, to me, like an early rap record, if you will, because she's pretty much just talking, along with the, you know. You are right.

I never thought of that. Yeah. So later when you get hip hop and so I remember I was playing with a ball that bounced up on the turntable, scratched the record and a little record store around the corner from us right then on Sumner Avenue, which is now Marcus Garvey, a little small record store. I went and brought a copy. And that actually turned out to be the first record I would purchase. But as a young adult or a teenager growing into my adult years, I always was a boombox guy

with a double cassette. When you mentioned that, I totally forgot about Coneack, boom, conia, I forget the name of the company, but like, that boombox culture. Can you, all right, so can you explain? Because it's hard for me to convey to people how we took in music. Like now, of course, my entire record collection can be on the phone. Same here.

It's crazy to where technology has gotten us. But I was a cassette guy primarily because, you know, you can make a copy. And if you had somebody had something special, you can burn and run a copy on your double cassette. So that really was instrumental in how hip hop really spread around the city. It was cassettes being handed and being dubbed and copied whatever. But I was always a boombox guy for quite a while. In fact, one of the last boomboxes I had, I donated to the Smithsonian. It literally is on exhibit, not the Afro-Smithsonian.

It was donated for that purpose, but they actually, because it was way before they finished the building. So it's in the American Smith. If you Google Fab Five Freddy's Boombox, Smithsonian, you'll see my. Boombox. But there's some guys now, I don't remember the name, that have a Kickstarter going on with the classic, massive boombox, double cassette, but it's also got Bluetooth, CD, USB. It has that old school boombox look. Chappelle hook me up with one of those. Chappelle knows those guys, and that was my Christmas.

I had that thing. Well, it's... I just ordered one, so I'm patiently waiting. Because I still got a lot of cassettes and stuff. A lot of my stuff went to the Schaumburg in Harlem, a lot of my stuff. But I still have... So, boom, but I still have a lot of cassettes that I need to dive into. So back then before the Giuliani era of anti-noise.

Yeah. Like, it was just... Anti-everything. It was right. Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Facts.

You go down there, yeah. But, like, it was just, you could freely just walk around and blast your shit on 10. Listen, that was, that was what it was, man, you know. And as the boom boxes got bigger, better and sounded better, we'd have to put a, I remember crews of cats that wanted to really walk around and listen to some music, you know, you know, like the track, the ladies, whatever. You had to cast a crew with chip in to put the batteries in because you had to put them D-sized batteries in.

And them big boxes were. because they was heavy. Right. But that was the move back then. Like, I can even remember before the cassettes, I remember Kastair had eight-track. There was portable eight-track boomboxers. I didn't have that,

but I remember seeing them. Yeah. This eight-track thing, which was weird, but that was the move back then. And then... What would you rock? Like, what was, like, your number one tester? Like, oh, man.

You would just curate tapes the night before and then make your soundtrack. Well, for me, when it really got going good, you would have, man, like recording Red Alert show, even before Red Alert and Magic was on mainstream stations, it was a station called W.HBI, which was sort of... Long Island or? No, W.HBI was a New York City station.

Okay. It was a community connection where you could pay, if you got a good slot, you'd pay like... To get on. ...50-60, which is what it cost it. You'd pay them, and you could broadcast. So the Supreme Team was the ones that was playing early break beats and early rap records. And you could go on YouTube and hear examples of what they would do.

I'll have my fresh tape ready to record, you know, when the Supreme Team came up. That's how you got access to the music. They was playing the real stuff. I had some of those tapes. So you're telling me that, because in my mind, I'm like, wow, like, radio programmers, I'm thinking, like, Frankie Crocker is, like, paving away for these DJs to get on. I didn't realize that that's community radio. Yeah, it was community radio.

So the character that Sam Jackson played and do the right thing, that was an actual thing where it's like a community radio station for... Yes, they had them. They had, yes, that's Sam Jackson and do the right thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. Senior Love Daddy. Yes, that would go on. But also on the weekends on BLS and kids,

they would have master mix shows where they would just let the music go for long stretches uninterrupted. They would do a commercial breaker too. If you were slick with it, you would pause. And then you'd come back in, so you'd cut out all the talk in the gibberish. But that was the key way you got hot music that wasn't in the regular playlist

or the regular top whatever, however they broke it down. So that was it for me. Pride month, Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space to celebrate your existence. Iheart Radio is proud to be an official sponsor of Pride Toronto Festival and we won't stop. Celebrate Pride. Turn up the love and listen to IHeart Pride Canada. Your 24-7 radio stream and the only playlist you need for your Toronto Pride celebrations. Pride is so great because it gives a whole bunch of people this visibility that they've never had before.

We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy Pride. IHeart Radio. I love the sounds, the buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place, soccer, football, at home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force.

From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond. game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture.

I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people, like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety.

Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And it's an ton of exciting because their new star is Javier Tichorito and Andes. Everyone sees me as a football player, but before anything else, I'm human. Every single day I'm still learning how to live with problems, mistakes, relationships, emotions ever since I was born. And I still have so many questions. Where do we come from?

What happens after death? How do you deal with cancellation? Cristiano or Messi? Do aliens exist? What is love? Real Madrid or Barza From every day and ordinary to the deep and extraordinary

This isn't a normal podcast Everything here is spontaneous, real and genuine This podcast is like a deep talk With your closest friends Where vulnerability comes out Conspiracy theories End up on the table And goals and lessons are shared

All in this life has a order perfect and everything It's just We're going to pressurably We're going to be able to come out We are here to connect The Chicharito And Javier El Chicharito

Randez and together with Ica Radio We're going to make the ordinary Extraordinary Stay close. It is a caracca. Listen to learning to be human on IHard Radio, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Can you name me three live shows that you witnessed in your early or teen years in your life? How often did you go to concerts?

Wow. Oh, boy. Not too often, but the first time I go to a concert in the 70s on my own, it was Slide in the Family Stone. And I loved your documentary, by the way. Thank you. And that was great because it taught me a lot about Slotid. I didn't know. I didn't realize he was on the radio and had been super impactful in that category, which explained a lot.

Going to see him was huge. Not much long after going to see Parliament Funkadelic when they would come to the garden. Those were huge events. I had tickets. I'm way up in the nosebleeds. But I loved it. It was incredible. So seeing...

Sly and Family Stone, you know, the Parliament, Funkadelic, those were huge memorable shows. I remember there was a summer concert series in Central Park that I went to. I was in Central Park when Diana Ross. I was there for that. The first one or? I was there both days. So the first one went crazy.

Look, I'm from Brooklyn. It was Brooklyn that went bananas that day. Kind of embarrassing, but tore that shit up. Then it rained. And then they read, then they did some. miraculous, let's do it the next day, and I was back there again for that. So I was incredible.

I wanted to go because I swore Michael Jackson was going to show up. I'm like, oh, Michael Jackson's got me mama. You can't go. That was epic. So I've seen some good shows, man. I've definitely a few of them. So of all of the stories that you've, well, I guess I can say griot stories of the adults in your life and you talk about your father's inner circle.

Yeah. What is the one that impacted you the most? Because you carry a lot of the history. Well, first of all, I was so mind-blown. You go into the craziest detail of your father's witnessing Malcolm X's assassination. Yeah, that was heavy. And are you the only one that has a cassette recording of that actual assassination? It's actually real to real.

That went, that real-to-reel tape. So one of my dad's closest friends was this gentleman, actually a drummer, but he kind of retired from drummer, became a full-time activist. His name was Willie Jones. He recorded on a thelonious monk date, Friday to 13th, most famously. Yeah. And then he became like a community activist, and he got tight with Malcolm to the extent where he had a portable reel-to-reel

that would, he would go to all of Malcolm's New York rallies. he would have his recorder set up, he would record. So that fateful day, my dad, Willie, and another one of their friends were at the Audubon Ballroom. Willie had his mic on the pedestal, and when the shots opened up, he recorded everything. So we heard that. It was a gentleman, I can't remember his name, that within the last 10 years or so, wrote a Malcolm X bio, if you will, or a book about Malcolm.

And the way he recounts that incident, I'm sure he had access to the tape because that tape was my dad. Oh, made the rounds? Yeah, well, they made copies for their friends. Okay. And so it was kind of circulated. But the copy I have is one of the original dupes, if you will, that went with my stuff to the Schaumburg. I don't know if they ever did the whole bake the tape to make sure they preserved everything in a correct way. But, yeah, you know, my dad and them would recount that numerous times.

It'd be chilling. Like, how old were you at the time? This is 65, so. Yeah, so I'm like, I don't remember it because I'm real little. But they would tell the story. I would hear the tape. They would put on the tape. They had numerous tapes of Malcolm's speeches that Willie had recorded.

And so they were like really following. In fact, one of the speeches Malcolm had gave prior, he spoke about, because you know they had tried to firebomb his house in Queens. Yes. There's the famous. image of Malcolm holding the rifle peeking out of the window because that shot was about him protecting his family. He knew he was being targeted.

There was a speech where my dad and them would play a recording where he would mention something to the effect that I know I might not be here. Something kind of he knew they were on him, but he still was so courageous. He kept going. He kept speaking. And so that fateful day when that happened. And my dad and them would tell that story, I heard it dozens of times. over the years.

And then it was a famous part, like when they ran up on stage and then they ran backstage and then Willie was peeping through a hole. My dad said, that's likely a bullet hole. Willie stepped back. And it was just craziness. In the recent Netflix documentary,

Who Kill Malcolm X, I'm looking. I did actually, not in that dock, but I did find, literally, I think it's the day before I did find footage of Malcolm outside of the hotel, Teresa building, and there's Willie Jones right behind him. What?

You could see, yeah, I've got the photo with the tape deck on his shoulder. But just hearing about that relentlessly, it was just such a sad. And I also want to point out, like, it's Malcolm at that time in most mainstream press. He was dragged. I mean, he was not as universally accepted and acknowledged as he is now among black folks as well, because he came off real edgy. At the time, you know what I mean. Black, over, conservative.

Yeah, very much of them. Really, you know, really super duper cautious about how to move. You know, black folks weren't even comfortable with being black. It was still Negro and kind of colored at that time when I'm really young. But Malcolm definitely has been proven to be right in so many topics and so many categories of things that he focused on and things that he was about in terms of what he said. You know, we hear those things echoing now in our timelines if your algorithm is in the right space and place.

Yes. So those things were just echoed throughout my childhood among my dad and his friends. You mentioned Willie playing for Thelonius. Yeah. You got to tell me this story. What made you want a cold call Thelonious Monk? Yeah, I did cold call. Oh, man, you know, well, it starts with, I guess being around my dad and his friends,

they'd be playing jazz often, recounting stories, and the fact that they would know who these musicians were just from hearing them play was fascinating to me. How do you know that's Sunny Rollins? And how do you know that's Mary Lou Williams or who these musicians are

was fascinating to me just from without hearing a voice? And then later the first musician that I was able to spot was monk. And it's the very powerful, seemingly simple way he played.

but at the same time it was very distinct to my ear. And I was like, I remember the first time. I was like, that's monk. And they would be like, yeah, that's monk. So I was like, man, I really- You never have musical aspirations because you're around all this jazz. I was.

I thought I wanted to be a drummer as a kid. Max gave me like a little, a really unique practice kit that opened up and had these pads that swung out of a briefcase and would sort of replicate. What? The different, yeah.

Somebody in Europe had given it to him. He gave it to me. That didn't work out. I didn't do what I should. Where is it? I wish I knew. Oh, come on, Fred. Stop playing.

I know. I know. I just say that to a master drummer. When that was single digit, yeah, that didn't work out. So you cold called them and... Yeah, so I'm looking through my dad's phone book. What made you want to call them? Because I liked the music and I was...

I had developed this thing about, Monk. I was the first musician who sound I could distinguish on the radio when my dad, like the way my dad and his friends, but that's so-and-so, oh, that's Mingus, that's the, how do you guys, how do you do that? So literally, Monk sound became super distinctive to me, so it became like this, yeah, Monk, I like Monk, I like Monk. And I'm flipping through my dad's phone book, and there's Monk's name, the Thelonious Monk. So I said, man, let me call the number. And I wanted to talk to Monk, but his wife answered the phone, Nelly, and, and, I was a woman. I I just had this incredible conversation with Nellie, thinking back as an adult.

She hears the voice of a young kid on the phone. She was like, oh, how sweet is this? Right. But what really stayed with me is the fact that I was talking about jazz, and she said, well, Freddie, jazz is like a conversation, which starts off with a topic being stated, and the other musicians are giving their interpretation or interpolation of that topic. And that helped me understand so much because, you know, particularly in bebop jazz, they state this statement in the beginning.

And then the other cats do their response and interpretation of that. And it was like, wow. And it helped me understand. I would later actually meet Nellie in the late 90s, early 2000s. And she did you remind her of your- I reminded her about the call. And then I had been fascinated about the. Barronists, who my dad and his friends would also talk about.

This was a Rothschilder, a patron of jazz. She would be around. Yeah, she would help many musicians. She had incredible taste. They respected her so heavily because she could hear the way they heard. Like if some cast were jamming, she'd be like, oh, that piano player, he's a motherfucker. And the cast would be like, you're right. What'd you know?

He's the one. Every area of our music has that person. Yeah. And I was fascinated because my dad, this is one of the stories that would come up often. She'd have a Rose Royce parked outside until five, six in the morning. So she was a patron to Monk, loved Monk, helped the family in bad times when these guys weren't able to eat. She was close with our Blakey the drummer. But Charlie Parker literally dies in her hotel suite at the Stanhope Hotel.

She was helping her. She would help cats out in a true patronly way. And so she was revered. There were numerous songs named after her, one of monks' tunes after, I think it's called Crepsicle for Nelly. If you check out Nellie, the Rothschild. So that was a story that I'd hear a lot about. And then later when I'd get on the downtown scene

and I'd meet different women that were just supportive and instinctive and understood it and got it, I'd say, you know, you might be something like this woman I'd hear about Nelly. And you're actually right about Monk having a distinctive style. Like, my dad and I often didn't see eye to eye on a lot of hip hop. Huh. But for some reason, the last time we had a bonding, he recognized. Like, this is the only time where he put me on to something.

In November when Wu Tang's 36 Chambers came out, the same day as Midnight Marauders. and I'm listening to I'm about to go to New York to get my record deal and I'm playing Wu-Tang Shane on the nigga was on and he was like that's the lonious monk

and then Claren in the Funk came on and he's like that's the loniest monk and he's like are these kids at the loniest monk or whatever but and at first I was like

man you don't know later I was like oh that was right that is the loniest monk so yeah all right so unfortunately I guess I'm part of the

well not intentionally gentrification part of New York. Literally my first day in New York was like every real New Yorker's complaint like the last day. It was December of 93 and this literally the day in which I guess 42nd Street was open for business as far as the disnification of it all. Yes. So me arriving in New York literally all week was just anger and disdain in the air. Like I'm staying in the Paramount on 46th Street. So I'm in like Midtown Manhattan, but all I hear is that people are bitching because like, man, 42nd Street ain't the same no more as Disney and Starbucks is here.

And like this is when I'm first starting to hear complaints of the old. But I think that is a cycle. So like I always hear the before your time. This is what New York was. And I've heard, you know, I've heard stories of people in the 50s say that no. The real jazz renaissance was in the early. late 30s and early 40s, and people in the 70s be like, man, 60s was the shit.

So for you becoming a teenager in the 70s, what was the shift that you first noticed happening in New York? Because you paint a pretty fair. I'm not going to say rosy or rose-colored glasses, but I know there is where the projects weren't seen as a mark of shame or you wanted to visit your uncle not. No, I'm going to the projects. But in the 80s, you wouldn't dare do that.

Sure. So what happened in the 70s that you observed that didn't cross over? Like, what things that were noticeable in the 60s that you didn't see come the 70s? Wait a minute. Let me make sure I got this right in terms of... Well, just in terms of culture, your observation of New York. Well, hmm. And I know it might be hard for you to take an observation if you're inside it.

Yeah. But were the 70s all that different for you? I can remember the beginnings of not even so much bed stye, because I guess when I was really young, I went to a tutor in downtown Brooklyn, what would be considered the Fort Green area. When the whole renovating of brownstones happened, that created this awareness of the quality of these homes,

and people began to start renovating them. And I guess that would set the table for gentrification down the line, if you will. Sell your house for a million dollars or? Yeah, well, that didn't, like I said, some parts of Fort Green. And then even further, I can remember like Brooklyn Heights. Because as a young kid, I was really curious about architecture. I would be looking at different periodicals and reading things that related to buildings. and I became aware that, you know,

and then I remember this like brownstone renovation thing happening back then, and that hit my radar. People stripping the plaster and having exposed brick and refinishing the wood. And the wood in our house was all painted. Then when I was like, wait a minute,

our house had wood like that. Why did they paint it? Like, I like, you know, became aware of what it had been, having grown up in a brown. in Bed-Stuy, that was somewhat of an awareness that things were changing. And then when you look down the line as the prices went way up through the roof in different areas that now is going on in Bed-Stuy, you know, luckily we still own the house.

You still own your original house? Yeah, me and my sister, but she lives in it with her family in Bed-Stuy. So that's a blessing. I mean, that's really what I learned watching gentrification happen in various areas in New York city, particularly watching that happen in Lower East Side where I lived when I made my move into Manhattan to really get things moving and grooving, that became like a big kind of line in the sand, so to speak, that activists were like, here's what they want to do, here's what they're coming, and the rents are going to be this.

Literally, the block I lived on that I talk about a lot in my memoir, Ludlow Street, there's high rises that have been recently built on Ludlow Street amidstead. It's tenements built for the poorest immigrant New Yorkers. So a lot of the stuff that they would talk about back then that I thought was so extreme and exaggerated has come to fruition. So but seeing that the way it transpired and following artists initially who were the people that would go into these areas and set up shop what literally first happened in Soho. Tribeca, Lower East Side. I was connected to those pioneers, if you will, particularly in the Lower East Side.

And then when it got crazy, based on the energy that the creative community created, like we made it cool, we made it sexy, we made it interesting. Then the developers come in and buy it all up. And unless you own something, you really don't benefit. You got to go once that lease is up.

Is it a fight to the finish to hang on? to your history and, and... I mean, if you own something, it's the only way you can kind of survive it and then you kind of somewhat benefit because the value of your property goes up. But watching that happen, particularly in the Lower East Side,

when they were selling drugs super duper ultra flagrantly. I'm talking heroin and cocaine in the streets, broad daylight, like it was a farmer's market in certain areas in Alphabet City, like Avenue C, Avenue D, it was edgy. to see the real estate people watch for artists to move into those areas, watch for galleries to open up to support artists like what we were doing, they would be, now it's time to buy.

And then they would buy up the property that was completely like decrepit. And now that became the high rent district, if you will. It's crazy to say that because you say Alphabet City now, I'm like, man, some of the greatest record stores, some of the best omacazi sushi ever had. I know. Yeah. I missed an era.

Pride month, Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space. To celebrate your existence. IHeart Radio is proud to be an official sponsor of Pride Toronto Festival and we won't stop. Celebrate Pride. Turn up the love and listen to IHeart Pride Canada. Your 24-7 radio stream and the only playlist you need for your Toronto Pride celebrations. Pride is so great because it's a great because it's.

It gives a whole bunch of people this visibility that they've never had before. We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy Pride. Iheart Radio. I love the sounds. The buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football. It's home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed?

I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernando Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture.

I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the My Coutura Podcast Network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people, like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges.

I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer. and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Because their new star is Javier Cichorito Hernandez.

Everyone sees me as a football player, but before anything else, I'm human. Every single day, I'm still learning how to live with problems, mistakes, relationships, emotions, ever since I was born. And I still have so many questions. Where do we come from? What happens after death?

How do you deal with cancellation? Cristiano or Messi? Do aliens exist? What is love? Real Madrid or Barza? From every day and ordinary to the deep and extraordinary. This isn't a normal podcast. Everything here is spontaneous, real and genuine.

This podcast is like a deep talk with your closest friends, where vulnerability comes out. Conspiracy theories end up on the table and goals and lessons are shared. All in this life has an order perfect and all is just. Wait me. I'm here to

have to connect. We are here to connect. I'm Jacharito Rambh and together with IHard Radio we're going to make

the ordinary extraordinary. Stay close. It's a carac. Listen to learning to be human on IHard Radio, Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcast. From the outside, looking at an outside I mean I'm a Philadelphia. Yeah. You know, I was force-fed the history of hip hop in the Bronx.

Right. Hip hop in the Bronx, in the Bronx, in the Bronx, and the Bronx, the Bronx. But, you know, I know that this culture is also developing in other burrows as well. Correct. What were your earliest hip-hop experiences in Brooklyn? Sure.

So before it's hip-hop, and I had a hand in that, it was these mobile, basically disco DJs. This begins from, I mean, they probably go back to the late 60s. But as a young shorty, I got to experience them coming to the parks or block parties in bedside. And these were the guys that made being a DJ cool. They weren't cutting, scratching. Nobody was really rapping. But just keeping the music going continually was a huge innovation.

And the better of those guys could blend records that kind of almost connected and keep a groove going. know, BPM, beats per minute, all that stuff we'd learn about later. And so some of the people that I remembered that resonated was in my area bedside, it was Frankie D. It was Master D who later became DJ Lance, rest in peace. It was Pete D.J. Jones, DJ Plummer, Maboya, and Queens. It was people like Infinity Machine, you know, the disco twins. These guys had massive sound systems, speakers. turntables, a mix, a crates of records, and they'd come out and just, they were the rock stars

in the community that really fueled what became the disco boom. Okay, this is before Saturday Night Fever, before Studio 54, this was where it all comes from. And who helped push this into the mainstream was Frankie Crocker, the DJ and program director of WBLS, who had his ear tapped in to these DJ. and when he saw the crowd respond to whatever they were playing, he would program that and spin that on BLS regardless of what was on the chart. He didn't follow the chart.

He followed his ears and he was in the man in control. And that lit a fuse that set off a move throughout the city. This was where the energy was coming from. These DJs and then these parties, they would eventually rent out restaurants in Midtown, during a bad economic time in the city and then they would promote these parties on BLS, places like Nell-Gwenz, Riverboat Cafe,

Nemo's Superstar Cafe, Nemos or whatever. These are places I'd hear about. I didn't have the money. I'm still like a young teen, but I'm aware of what this is going on. So this was the spark that inspired Cool Herk to do what he did and other DJs around the city. Yes, this is how it goes.

goes down. There's a misnomer that just because Kool-Herk is from Jamaica, keep in mind, he's about 12 or so years old when he emigrates to the city. Right. That because there's this incredible dance hall reggae scene that goes on, what's even more interesting is that these two forms of DJing, if you will, are developed independent of each other, not aware of each other, but from similar inspiration, which was. were the black radio jocks in Jamaica, when the weather was right, they can catch the black radio jock in New Orleans or maybe somebody that had a late night show in Florida. And they were sort of emulating that idea of the deep. Matter of fact, keep in mind, that's the original disc jockey is the guy playing music on the radio talking a little slick patter.

Jock and, well, past Jocko. Jocko, of course, is a great example. Right. But what's the brother on Stax Records that did, was it Rufus Thomas? Yes. He was a radio guy super popular as Slice Stone. So these are the guys in the black community that would get a, oftentimes it'd be a late-night radio slot that did talk that slick, jazzy patter with rhyming a little bit here and there. Frankie Crocker came out of that whole thing as well.

Also in New York, it was WWR. with people like Hank Span and these guys that talk real slick and groovy. Those were the initial inspirations for the idea of being a DJ, keep controlling that music, and then the whole patter are talking. Initially the first talking on the mic at these local parties was promoting who the DJ was. You know, Flash will tell you he just set up a mic stand,

and I think it was Kid Crio that got on the mic first, and then, you know, Melly Mel and Cowboy. The rest would come in and then they developed cool things to say on the mic. But it was all about the DJ initially. So I witnessed all of that transpired. This was some of the stuff. How would you know something was happening? Oh, I remember on certain summer nights, man, and sitting on a stoop, when it got quiet enough,

you might hear the rumble of the base bottoms. And he'd be like, that was what we were talking in Brooklyn. at that time and best I was like, yo, where they jamming at? Yo, it's a jam at this park, 44 park, St. John's Park, Brevard Projects, I hear there's a jam going on. We would be, we would walk all over to these parks or the right block party to hear one of these hot mobile DJs playing. And it was at one of these parties, I think it might have been a Master D party when he put on something real different. A couple of cats dropped to the floor. doing the semblance of breakdancing.

And I don't know if it was Apache, Bob James Mardi Gras. It was something that I was like, what is he playing? And I went up to the DJ. Say, yo, what's that? And the cat, the first inkling of something, he said, yo, that's the Uptown sound.

But this is when you'd go up to the rope. DJs were set up a rope around them playing. Go across the roof. It would always be a crew of kids watching like this, staring at everything. These are all the kids that wanted to be DJs. Right. This one inspired early DJ.

to soak their records so they can be able to play. Because people are like, yo, what's he playing? Yo, I never heard that. No way. Oh, you know, it was like, no, I'm soaking the label off of this vinyl. So you will never know because that's part of what the attraction is. Only you only hear this record if you go to this cat spinning. Anyway, dude said it's the Uptown sound.

Like I literally went, I got some of my homies off my block. And we took the train up to Harlem and walked around asking cats where they jamming at. You know, we was just trying to find. And like, where's this Uptown? I didn't know if it was Uptown Manhattan or the Bronx. But I was obsessed. You just blindly went to... Yes, yes.

I like, what is this going on? Like, oh, y'all having jams uptown too? What did you discover? Nothing. So it was a minute. I didn't connect with nobody. But ironically, as I detail in my book, when I connected with Lee Cignonis,

like I'm talking, yo, are you hip to these DJs? I hear these cats Uptown. They're doing something different. Oh, yeah. And he, I mean, I probably had heard Flash's name by this point, and I know a few kernels of info. And Lee said, wait a minute.

Yo, I know what you're talking about. Those cats have played at the community center at the base of these project. This is the Smith projects in the Lower East Side, right at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm like, what? So literally a month or so later, Lee let me know that it was Flash and the Furious Four. This is 78, 79. Lee says,

yo, they're going to be playing right here in the community center this weekend. It was Flash and the Furious Four. The fifth member, Rahim, hadn't joined a group yet. And that's how I connect. I'm there at that party. I speak to Meli Mel. I said, man, you ever think about making a record?

He was like, who would buy it? This is what Meli Meli Melch said to me. Because it wasn't about records yet. These cats was getting $3,400 for spinning, here it is, whatever. This was what it was at that time. How long would the party last? The party would be from, you know, 10-11 to 3, 2, 3, 4 in the morning, you know.

Now I'll do a 2-3-hour set, and I'm already like, ah, it's about 180 songs. But it's 2026. There's a whole history of music behind me. Yeah. But I'm trying to figure out, like, in 1978, with just, like, a good quality. the maybe 40 songs if you're lucky. Wow. Like how do you make shit last?

That's interesting. Was there ever a law or? Well, typically four o'clock was the cutoff for most joints because in New York, we got our liquor law. It goes to four. Most places when I would begin to travel, it's over at two. But New York, I realized in one of the few cities, I think, like New Orleans or Louisiana, things can go to four, which I was like.

Like, wow, but most other places, everything was a rap at two. But typically a party would go to that time. I mean, most of the... What about noise ordinances? Like, what cops come and be like, yo, it was too loud? At a gymnasium, no, because it's like a contained area. I don't have any... You're not affecting.

And the sound was good to you? Like, it felt like... No, a lot of the sound at that time, the quality of a lot of the sound was bad. Finally, someone tells me the truth. Oh, God. Everyone was like, yo, me, she was crazy. See, we had some guys talk shit, but I'd go to a lot of jams. And, you know, Bronx guys initially didn't have great equipment, but they had the innovative idea.

And the way I look at it is also because the Bronx was the poorest borough. A lot of times young. But what about the tale of the Hercules in these. Herc, I believe, had, I'm from Brooklyn, but I believe Herc had a massive system, which is a thing. So the Herkley had the big speakers, whatever. But a lot of people was cobbling together. shit. I remember hearing about Cass was they were snatched

the audio PA speakers out of the train station. Cass would take the speakers out of their TV sets out of the big consoles. You had the big piece of furniture TV and the crib. Cass was trying to cobble together anything to get some bigger sound. You know what?

I believe you. Yeah, it was crazy. So I remember going to some parts be like, yo, this shit sounds horrible. Some of the mobile deeds, what I would learn later. Like, there's an incredible documentary, I took part in it, my man, Ron Amin Ra Lawrence,

produced this, along with my boy Hassan Po. It's called Founding Fathers, which gets into a lot of these early disco DJs that set the table for what Herc and the rest of hip hop would be. Some of these cats, I remember distinctly in that,

Doc, one of these cats, pops had some paper and gave his son a couple of Gs, which was a lot of money, still is, but then probably, you know, cost of living, to go and buy the big, effect official stuff. Serwin Vega, speakers was a big brand.

Get the right amps and all of this stuff. I mean, they had better, a lot of these mobile DJs that led up to it had better sound quality, but the innovations were definitely sparked by what Herk did and the cats wanting to cut, scratch, and mix and what Flash did, like going into serious R&D,

did innovate tremendously. So that all did go down. But, you know, this is what you navigated through. I believe you only, you know. I went to Cuba for the first time in 2002. And it was like time traveling back to the 70s. I went to Cuba early on too. And they were, one guy had a car speaker.

One guy had that. Thank you. Yes. I saw something similar when I went to Cuba. They jerry-rigged whatever they could have together. And it was so magical to watch a whole community. I have the headphones. I have this record.

I have this turntable. I have this cassette player. I saw it as well. I had these chords. I've seen people with razor. It's like, it was the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life. A lot of that in the, in this desire to be in that space because it was so huge at that time. And yes, once again, Herk did have the Hercules, which were the name of his big, powerful speakers.

But a lot of other cats didn't have that. You just didn't have the money. That stuff cost a few thousand dollars to get the amps, the speakers. All the equipment needed was a heavy lift. That's why the famous story is when the blackout of 1977 happened, a lot of cats in the Bronx went to them areas when the, when the, and they liberated a lot of equipment. See, that's how I thought hip-hop started.

And it's, you know, the great thing about it. about YouTube now, if you Google Grandmaster Flowers, Pete DJ Jones, people... They're telling their story? Not telling the story, but there was little clips and moments and footage of these guys that people found. Maybe somebody filming on a Super 8 film camera, and you could see flowers and you could get a peek at these guys.

But if you see this documentary, which I believe should be on 2B by now, it was on YouTube for quite a while, this founding fathers. You get a real good look and understanding of the people that predated what we know of as hip hop. So it was a fascinating story with a bit more of a history that's not as widely known because these guys didn't make records. They just played at parties. So they didn't record a compilation or do any of this stuff.

All of that would happen during hip hop. The whole idea of the, well, once again, initially it was all about who the DJ was and how many watts in his system. The rapper was there just to big up who the DJ was. The rapper eventually took over inadvertently. And when all the great records came out and the DJ was pushed further to the back, the ones that were on top of their game became producers, the DJs because it was a thing, you know, in the beginning, as you know, I'm sure you know, in the early phase of him, hip-hop hitting records, everybody had their DJ.

Right. Because the DJ was, that was the nucleus of it all. Exactly. But that pushed further to the back, unfortunately, as the rapper became, you know, the kind of preeminent thing. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. I-R. Radio. Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada,

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And together with IHard Radio, we're going to make the ordinary, extraordinary, stay close. It is a carac. Wow. Listen to learning to be human on IHard Radio, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So question, I've been dying to ask you all my life. All right. I'm going to time travel. Let's go to, let's go to 1980, 81.

All right. I'm going to be your intern. I'm 10, 11 here. I want you to walk me through from sketchbook to completion when you see it ride by. Walk me through the entire process. And I mean like in your early beginnings. tagging a train. Yeah.

Like, oh, your Campbell's Soup idea. Yeah. Yeah. Walk me from sketchbook, acquiring the paint, knowing what time to go, who's the lookout. I want to know the entire duration of how this happens. Yeah. Well, spray paint was, it was all kind of liberated at that time. Of course. It's a New York thing.

There's a reason where any place that's selling spray paint, it's usually in a cage. It's usually like a metal thing. Because that was requisite. That's how... How long did it take them to catch on that this is what it's for? This all started back in the 70s. Okay. I mean, you just...

Yeah, hardware store, it'd be like, where's all the spray paint going? And it was like, clearly... I mean, the cast was on some super stealth shoplifting shit. That was what it was. 90% of where it came from, that's how it was. It was even... Oh, so no one's, like, pulling up...

the year I got 40 cans. How much is that? No one's... Everybody for the most part doing this at that time is a teenager. Renegate. All of this culture was invented by teenagers. Okay.

The beginnings of the rap, hip-hop thing, everybody is a teenager. So nobody has the hundreds of dollars that's required to go and do this. And so those metal frames were put were affixed to that part of the hardware store that sold spray paint. That became.

a thing. But before that was a thing, in the graffiti grapevine, cats would be like, yo, such and such a store, such a, such a location. They got all the right colors, and it's a good look. So graffiti cats would move on these places to get the, to get the paint. There was one well-known graffiti artist whose girl had made a baby carriage, and the space that was supposed to be the baby was hollowed out. So he'd going there with his chick, you know, and they were slipping, so they might be able to put 10 or 15 cans in this hollowed out baby. How many cans would you need to really make the train of your dreams? Okay.

Or the piece of your dreams. Yeah, no question. So for the soup can, that's a whole car, top the bottom. Oh, God, subway car is about 20 feet in length by about eight feet high. that's a good, that might be a good 20 or so cans, a lot of red and a lot of white, because that's the main thing. What you would have is you would have different types of caps.

Now, graffiti has now elevated to us like an official art form. So there's companies that literally manufacture varying caps and tops to give you different size lines. And we would have to hit up the jiffy, the oven cleaner was one, oven cleaner and spray starch had caps that would spray out in a wide area. So once you do your outline for whether it's a letter or whatever you're trying to draw, you would then put on what we call a fat cap to do the fill in. So the line of a fat cap is probably three to four inches wide.

So you can fill in quicker as opposed to the line, the initial cap, that line may be not more than an inch or a half inch. I always wanted to know how you determine like your different. You know, like everything under the sun. There are tutorials all over YouTube that break down how you do this with these caps that you could now acquire. There's even companies that make paint with an incredible array of colors for the purpose of making art referred to as aerosol art by some, as opposed to graffiti, which is technically illegal. But in the formative days, this is how a lot of the paint was acquired. These were the different types of tools and techniques that would be needed.

So you would do your outline, let's say, for the cans. Then you do the outline. Then you switch up the tops and you start filling in those areas. So with that fat cap, you get a wide line. You could fill that in as opposed to a thin line. You'd be there forever using too much paint. You come through with a fat cap, fill that in, do the white areas of the top of the can, do the red areas of the bottom of the can, if you will, get all that right and tight, boom.

Then you come and do the other layers that need to happen. How are you able to see? Incredibly difficult. It depends. If you're in a tunnel, well, it's going to be a lot darker. But people would adjust and have a lot of graffiti writers, of course, would do a pre-sketch in their piece book or on whatever piece of paper. Were you one of those people?

Yeah, I didn't do a whole lot of pieces. So I'm not trying to front like I was a master just. I did a lot of tagging. Okay. But when I got with Lee, who was a master at that time, I learned a hell of a lot. So under Lee's tutelage regarding the techniques and different colors and stuff, I learned a lot of that from him and then a lot of the art history stuff because I have been nerding out on pop art and all these different schools of art histories I'm sharing with Lee.

So we had a nice little coming together sharing of information. So that's essentially, so whether you were doing is a great image of this and also in Star Wars Martha Cooper's photos of my man, Dondy, rest in peace, in the yard. painting. And so he's in a yard where you literally would have to climb up. There's an incredible iconic shot. Dondi straddling two cars in a yard,

one leg on this part of the train, the other leg here as he's painting. Iconic photo. And that's how what we call top-to-bottom whole cars. That was the reference. Top-to-bottom meant that the imagery went from the bottom of the train to the top and the entire car.

I think that was the hand. I think that was the hand of doom piece. It was his name Dondy and then a hand at the end of the car, just super iconic stuff. Would ladders be necessary? Like what equipment would you be? No, you had to climb and hang off his shit to do it. No ladder. You wouldn't bring a ladder in. If you're really

doing a big piece, you've got a big bag of spray paint, shopping bag. People wasn't rocking backpacks then, so I don't think that was a miss. So you'd pretty much have a shopping bag. So you'd have to navigate. You'd have to scope out what yards you wanted to do. Because graffiti guys would want to hit specific trains.

You was like, I'm killing this line. So the Fab Five, most of their great work, was on the Lexington Avenue No. 5 train. So that was the target. So you would then need to know where you can hit the five, whether you hit the yard, go to the yard up in Baychester, or you would know what tunnels the trains could be in a different part. So in the graffiti scene network, if you will, at that time,

if you was really tapped in, you would know or learn from other graph guys where you go to hit this particular line. Oh, I'm trying to get up on the fives, the twos, the A's, the Bs, the Ds. You know exactly where the trains are. Yeah, you had to know, oh, this layup is where these trains. The layup means when the trains are not running,

doing rush hour certain times in the day, and then after seven, eight, when rush hour ends, they lay up most of these trains in certain places. So graph guys would be like, yo, I'm trying to get up on this line. I'm heading here, there, whatever. So that's all a part of the how you did it, the process. How long would it take you to the danger element?

One, getting past security, if there's any. No, so sometimes a train might be in a particular tunnel. You would know like, oh, there's a layup. in between such and such a stop in a tunnel where such and such a line, a train is being laid up during the rush hour. So you'd be like, oh, you jump off the tracks, you go to the end of the platform,

you may run through the tunnel to a certain experience or maybe go down and whatever, and the train would be there. You can hit that particular line there, or the yard at either end of the way. where the trains end. Usually at the end of the train where the runner is on the map,

there's typically a yard somewhere nearby, where the trains go to lay up, get maintenance, et cetera, et cetera. All right, so my only education of the rivalry factor or the disrespect factor, of course, was Beach Street. And the whole spit narrative.

Beach Street, a story of graffiti artist that's a league journalist type. that does these beautiful murals and then someone comes in behind him sprays spit on top of the thing to disrespect him. Yeah. Were there...

That was going on. Was there jealousy amongst crews as far as like... Raging. The great... Rewining art. Yeah. The great look at that,

which was incredibly captured, is a documentary called Style Wars. Of course. Yeah. And in Style Wars, oh man, this was a big deal. Now, I'm not actively bombing trains.

That was the phrase we use for being aggressive bombing, but we was now had moved into the art world. That whole linkage that I envision is now happening. But during that period, there was a graffiti writer, a white kid name.

Thank you. Cap, thank you so much, because I'm like, not counting. Always for the one from downtown. And Cap, who was doing a type of graffiti known as throwups, these are kind of bubble letters. You can do them quick. You do a quick outline, and then you put the fat cap on and do a quick filling, you could do them real quick.

They'd usually be just a couple of letters. His name was cap, C-A-P. And he, I think, in the graffiti slang at the time, if you weren't nice with it or respected, you were referred to as a toy. And if people saw you as a toy, they would sometimes go over you. If you respected somebody, like if you was a graffiti, right, oh, that's question. love. He's major. You don't want to fuck with his name and try to put your name. You would respect and not go over somebody's name. People didn't really have a lot of respect for cap is the way I understood it. And he went ballistic and he started doing cap throwups over everybody.

I don't think it. It was all the rage and some dudes that was doing graft that was kind of thugging it. You'll be when I run up on him, I'm going to do this, that. And the third. You know, but this white boy was no joke. And so he was ready for that. He knew what was coming. So literally while Henry and them are making this documentary Star Wars, they encounter him in the tunnel. Now, he didn't show it on camera, but he let them know, like, yo, B, I'm ready for whoever.

And he was, when this was going on. So if you see the documentary style wars, it literally captures that much. moment. You see young graph guys talking about, yo, this cat went over this. He went over my piece. Even seeing this other dude kid that was real nice with it, white kid in the front, seen does this incredible mural in the dock right after that, a cap over it. Like a beauty. I was like, yo. How long can you expect your piece to stay up before? First of all, with the city, like, if a train gets tagged, would the city be like, all, it's ruined now, take it back to the yard and clean it? No, it was an ongoing.

program at the time when trains were being clean. The city was spending millions of dollars biting graffiti. The mayor at the time, Mayor Koch was planning to put wolves and attack dogs in the subway yards.

It was pretty heavy duty. It was the scourge of the city. It was hated. It was just, I mean, it was everywhere. And I'm not trying to say that all of it was art, if you will. But, man, It was nobody really acknowledging like, well, that one over there.

It's pretty incredible. Look with the guy painted. And look at this one over here. And so that was the general climate at the time. How long could it stay up for you? Well, it depends. So once again, you could do a piece that might run for months or you could do a piece that may go into the buff.

Maybe that particular train was scheduled. It might go into the buff right away. So what began to happen was Henry Chalfant, who, along with, with Martha Cooper became these incredible documentarians of this work going on. The graffiti riders knew these guys and they would, as soon as you do a train, you would hit, because most graffiti kids, as we all were,

had a bullshit 110 instimatic with a pop-up flash. That's all we had as kids. Henry had official 35 millimeter camera, as did Martha Cooper. And they became really a part of the scene that would, the graffiti riders would hit them

right away. Yo, I just did a train. It's going to be on this sunny side. So they would know what's, you would let them know what side. They can catch it with the sun on it. And they could, they would run out to really photograph these trains

as they first left the yard after being painted. So oftentimes they would get a fresh shot. B for the, the windows would get buffed first. But if you got the whole car first, so they now have this incredible documentation of hundreds and hundreds of various trains, through that period that have been documented in many books.

They're featured in the documentary Star Wars. There's the book Subway Art and a couple of other books came out. That became the textbook for people that got into graffiti around the world. Like they would all get, blew my mind and got access. Speaking of evidently, like some of the greatest pieces ever have seen riding in train. Yeah, it's seen in Italy. It's remarkable. I mean, look, I mean, I'm.

A part of the culture, I wasn't the most prolific. Right. Or I've never claimed to be that. But sometime when I'm traveling, I'm in Europe and I'm on a Euro train or whatever, and I see graph everywhere, I'm like, oh, boy, I can't believe. You know? It's not like my fault, but I definitely helped to kind of... You planted a seed.

Definitely planted a lot of seeds that got beyond expectation how these seeds blew and got planted and germinated all over the world. All right, we haven't done this in a long time, but we have to stop the episode right here. All right. Fat-Fi Freddie and I spoke for over two hours. You know how that gets. So come back next week.

I want you to check your podcast feed for Part 2, where we get into Wild Style and Yom TV rap ears and talk about his directing music videos. And his book, Everybody's Fly is out now. I brought my copy. Make sure you get yours. If you dug this episode, please tell somebody who you think might dig it.

In the meantime, catch you next week. All right. Questlove show is hosted by me, Amir Questlove Thompson. Executive producers are Sean G., Brian Cahoon, and me. Produced by Brittany Benjamin and Jake Payne. Produced for I-Heart by Noel Brown. Edited by Alex Conroy. I-Heart video support by Mark Canton.

Logos, graphics, and animation by Nick Paloey. Additional support by Lance Coleman. Special thanks to Kathy Warran. Special thanks to Sugar Steve Mandel. Please subscribe, rate, review, and share the Questlop show wherever you stream your podcast. Make sure you follow us on socials. That's at QLS. Check out hundreds and hundreds of QLS episodes, including the Questl.

Quest Love Supreme shows in our podcast archives. Questlove shows and production of I Heart Radio. It's that time to put on your jersey and wave your flag, whoever you root for. Why do I watch the walk up? That's like asking me, why do I breed? And it's beautiful. The guys are young and cute and fit.

It's not just a game. It's your culture. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda. And this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. Listen to American Football on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joy is essential and it's also elusive.

But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotby. If you're craving inspiration to maximize your joy, tune into these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats. Open your free IHeart Radio app. Search Joy 101 and Listen Now. Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby is presented by CVS.

All right, listen up. The Jonas Brothers here. Our podcast is called, Hey Jonas. We've here, since everyone has a podcast, we want it to as well. And we've had some incredible guests so far. And now our good friend, Nile Horn, is joining the show. How's it going, boys? Hey, Niall.

It was the same thing with slow hands. The old hands is not about anything else really, is it? You know, or taste so good can't be about food. You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done. You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Everyone sees me as a football player, but before anything else, I'm human.

Every single day I'm still learning how to live with problems, mistakes, relationships, emotions ever since I was born. This isn't a normal podcast. Everything here is spontaneous, real and genuine, just honest conversations about what it means to be alive. I'm Javieril Chichariot Hernandez and listen to Learning to Be Human on IHart Radio, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.