The James Altucher Show

A Note from James:In the Blondie song “Rapture,” which was the number-one song in 1981, Debbie Harry has this famous line: “Fab Five Freddy told me everybody’s fly.”So the question is—who is Fab Five Freddy?This guy is one of the central figures in the birth of hip-hop culture. Not just rap music, but the whole ecosystem: graffiti, breakdancing, fashion, DJ culture, art, film—everything that eventually turned into a massive global industry.Hip-hop today represents hundreds of billions of dollars in music, fashion, and entertainment. But in the late ’70s and early ’80s it was just a small creative movement happening in New York.Fab 5 Freddy helped connect all those worlds. He bridged graffiti artists, musicians, downtown art scenes, and eventually MTV.He also just wrote a book called Everybody’s Fly, and it was a huge honor for me to talk with him about the origins of hip-hop and how creativity actually grows.Episode Description:Before hip-hop became a global industry, it was a loose network of DJs, graffiti a