![]() It’s no wonder that a lot of people look for something similar to the plate-emulation scenario. Large control over dimensions and the surface material of all six surfaces in the room. “The song was just a strong affirmation of womanhood, but I created a narrative that Latifah was the daughter of one of the generals of the anti-apartheid struggle.Fully automated support for creating sound effects that move. “I would rave about her to Monica Lynch, who was president of Tommy Boy Records at the time.” Her 1989 video for “Ladies First” was the second clip he directed for her. “I knew her as a part of DJ Mark the 45 King’s crew, Flavor Unit, and really dug her sound,” he said. It was real deep at the time.”įab 5 Freddy noted he was “instrumental” in getting Queen Latifah signed to a record deal. Most everyone living in the projects had been in some way affected by crack, whether your loved one was on it, or was in jail, or you got robbed. “Queensbridge was the most crack-infested place. “These other cats are just real hood cats from the Queensbridge projects, where we shot it,” Fab 5 Freddy said. This is Nas’s brother, Jabari “Jungle” Jones, on the far right. It was huge.” ‘Yo! MTV Raps’ T-Shirtįab 5 Freddy directed one of Nas’s first videos, for the “Illmatic” track “One Love," in 1994, and took some snapshots on the set. “‘Wild Style’ was film school for me,” he said. ![]() So when George Jackson saw that, he was like, ‘Oh my God, this is the same as ‘New Jack City’! You have to come and work on this film!” As an associate producer, Fab 5 Freddy selected wardrobe, including jewelry - “the right four-finger rings and the ropes that they would wear from the street level until they got fully polished,” he explained. “In the video, there was an undercover cop that turned out to be a part of his crew. “I had just directed a video called ‘Road to the Riches’ for Kool G Rap and Polo that was the first video about the rise and fall of a New York crack dealer,” Fab 5 Freddy said. He produced or appeared in several films that drew from or inspired the music scene he had championed in New York, including “New Jack City” and “Juice.” With “Wild Style” and “Yo! MTV Raps,” Fab 5 Freddy was one of hip-hop’s most visible chaperones on the road from the streets to Hollywood. His personal photographs and videos, and the narratives they tell, comprise much of a career-spanning archive that was recently acquired by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library. ![]() It was only later that I realized they could form an ongoing narrative.”Īs a sought-after graffiti artist, music video director, film producer and the original host and creative force behind “Yo! MTV Raps,” Fab 5 Freddy’s lens produced a panorama of future cultural landmarks of New York and beyond, revealing an era when hierarchies of race, class and taste in art were beginning to scramble. “I was always trying to capture moments, or visual ideas. “At a certain point, I began to think of myself as a camera,” Fab 5 Freddy said in a recent interview. Instead, decades before social media, he documented the events of his daily life on film, deploying either a compact point-and-shoot camera or a Hi8 camcorder that he always kept at the ready. When he was hopscotching between segregated poles of 1970s and ’80s New York - the uptown of Grandmaster Flash and the Rock Steady Crew the downtown of Andy Warhol and Blondie - brokering the kind of cultural exchange that would pave the way for hip-hop’s eventual takeover, Fred Brathwaite, better known as Fab 5 Freddy, never kept a consistent diary.
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