The Guide #237: Fab 5 Freddy, the street artist at the heart of New York’s creative zenith
In this week’s newsletter: A new memoir by Fred Brathwaite offers an insight into the city’s emerging underground scene in the 70s and 80s – and shows us the power of subcultures in difficult times Don’t get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereHello everyone, I’m Coco Khan, covering for Gwilym Mumford, and this week, as the sun started to peep out from behind the clouds, I counted five Jean-Michel Basquiat T-shirts on passersby during a park walk.Sure, I may live in a trendy London borough – but it’s still hardly surprising, given that the name and works of the New York artist whose roots were in graffiti have been licensed to fashion brands from Next, Primark and Uniqlo to Supreme and Saint Laurent.It’s hard to imagine that the artist – who died at 27 of a drug overdose, and whose signature slogan SAMO© (Same Old Crap – a criticism of consumerism, and the commodification of art, with a playful copyright mark) – would approve of the Basquiat name being on keyrings, tote bags and clothing.But hey, what do I know – I’m just another purist bore still upset that Ramones T-shirts are worn by millions who couldn’t name a song, when the Ramones themselves did not care.Still, the hope is that such merchandise connects new audiences to the artist’s work and graffiti as an art form.
See also: Keith Haring, another street artist whose work adorns T-shirts across the land.But if the shirts don’t do it, then a new, frankly dizzying, book will – the memoir of Fred Brathwaite, AKA Fab 5 Freddy, his graffiti name: Everybody’s Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture.For the Blondie fans experiencing a twinge of recognition, yes, this is the Fab 5 Freddy referenced in the seminal hit Rapture (“Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody’s fly,” raps Debbie Harry), and the book neatly follows his life, starting as a smart, plucky kid from Bed-Stuy, in Brooklyn, who became the connective tissue between the emerging Black art forms of hip-hop and graffiti and the predominantly white downtown art-world scene.Basquiat makes an appearance, as does Haring, Blondie, Andy Warhol and even the Clash, and the book is being hailed as an “all-access pass” to the creative explosion of New York in the 1970s and 80s.It is a truly rollicking tale, told with the touching wide-eyed quality of Brathwaite as a young man discovering these new worlds for the first time.
On visiting legendary punk venue CBGB: “I felt like a Black secret agent on a mission, since the crowd was blindingly white.But I’ll never forget the first time I went into the bathroom: graffiti was everywhere … Yes there is a connection here between […] punk, and hood culture.” Or on seeing the godfather of dance music, Larry Levan, at the gay club Paradise Garage: “[It] wasn’t just a club.It was a transformational experience … Gay men, it must be said, tend to have hot female friends,” Brathwaite writes.“The first time I did mescaline was at the Garage.
Later my first time with MDMA was at the Garage.And since we’re talking about the 1970s and 80s, there was always some blow.”But reading Everybody’s Fly in 2026 is also bittersweet.The story of Brathwaite is also the story of New York, and of so many other cities before they became spaces to merely consume.Where subcultures existed physically rather than just online as aesthetics, and where the professionalisation of everything hadn’t yet happened (just ask Fab 5 Freddy, who got his break when he asked to be a cameraman on a TV show, despite having never done it before).
That New York was far from perfect, of course – it was in dire straits economically: “New York was broke,” as journalist Glenn O’Brien, who features in the book, put it,As many cities face economic struggles, perhaps there is a sense of comfort in Brathwaite’s story – that from the ashes something magnificent may grow,For Fab 5 Freddy, rap and punk were a symbol of “urban youth going against the grain, inventing their own culture, creating their own fun, responding to the world as it was” – “both so wrong, they were right”,In other words: everybody’s fly,Even if you can’t name a Ramones song.
To read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday
Treat jailed drug dealers like radical extremists, says prisons watchdog
Jailed criminals who are flooding prisons with drugs should be isolated like radical extremists and “assertively managed”, the England and Wales prisons watchdog has said.Charlie Taylor, HM inspector of prisons, said major dealers were living “consequence-free” in jail when they should be separated from the majority of inmates, subjected to regular searches for phones, and punished and rewarded according to their behaviour.Taylor’s demands for a radical rethink follow concerns from MPs about how to break a cycle of violence and chaos caused by the large-scale importation of drugs into “long-term high-risk” prisons, which hold England and Wales’s most dangerous inmates.In an interview with the Guardian, Taylor said: “Some serious organised crime gang members are coming into prison and their feet just don’t touch the ground.“They’re running operations and making a lot of money almost from the moment they get into the jail
‘People are so judgmental’: the growing cohort of over-55s facing homelessness
Richard Hewett, who was forced to sleep in his car when his relationship broke down, is one of many in the UK hit by rising costs and a lack of social housingWhen Richard Hewett’s relationship broke down, he was forced to leave his partner’s council house – but found his disability benefits didn’t stretch far enough to get him his own flat in his Essex home town. He resorted to the next best option: sleeping in his car.It wasn’t what he had expected, aged 59. At 6ft 2in, he squeezed into a Ford Focus and struggled to sleep. When he broke his ankle, he couldn’t look after it properly, contracted sepsis and had his leg amputated
World held hostage by reliance on fossil fuels, Christiana Figueres warns – and climate health impacts are ‘mother of all injustices’
Countries are being “held hostage” by their reliance on fossil fuels, a former UN climate chief has warned, describing the health impacts of climate change as “the mother of all injustices”.Christiana Figueres, an international climate negotiator who helped deliver the Paris agreement signed in 2016, made the comments as she was announced on Wednesday as co-chair of a Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality.Lancet Commissions are international collaborations that analyse major global health issues and influence policy. This commission will examine legal frameworks to hold countries accountable for the health harms of sea-level rise. It will report by September 2027
What are the health impacts of sea-level rise, and who should pay?
In November in Solomon Islands, the former Tongan health minister Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala stood outside the main hospital in Honiara and “watched seawater lapping at its outer walls”.“The facility is now under threat, with plans under way to relocate it to higher ground – a massive and costly undertaking,” Saia, a surgeon and now the World Health Organization’s regional director for the western Pacific, tells the Guardian.“It should never have come to this.”The impact on patients and health services is just one part of a growing health burden driven by sea-level rise, including water contamination, infectious disease, food insecurity, displacement and worsening mental health.In 2024, at the inaugural UN general assembly meeting on sea-level rise, representatives of small island developing states and low-lying countries described the issue as a global crisis threatening 1 billion people worldwide, urging governments globally to act to protect their health and lives
Charity cleared after false claims online over migrant welcome project
A refugee charity subjected to vicious social media attacks over a migrant welcome project in schools has been cleared of wrongdoing after watchdogs found allegations it encouraged pupils to send Valentine’s Day cards to asylum seekers were misleading and false.City of Sanctuary UK came under fire last year after rumours spread online that under its schools programme, children were being “forced” to write heart-shaped welcome cards to adult migrants, including cards addressed to “my fiance”.The Tory MP Gavin Williamson made a formal complaint against City of Sanctuary last August in the wake of the online attacks, claiming the charity had acted inappropriately and breached the law by acting in a “highly politicised” manner.However, in a finding published on Tuesday, the regulator rejected Williamson’s complaint and said the charity had been the victim of a baseless misinformation campaign that resulted in its staff and trustees receiving threats.Helen Earner, the director of regulatory services at the Charity Commission, said: “In this case, concerns about the charity’s work were fuelled by online misinformation, something charities are increasingly subject to and a concern for us as regulator
Judith Rapoport obituary
The child psychiatrist Judith Rapoport, who has died aged 92, is credited with bringing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) to public awareness. Her book The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing (1989), which was translated into more than 20 languages and written in jargon-free style for a non-medical readership, was based on her groundbreaking research into the condition.People with OCD can feel their lives are upended by the feeling that they must constantly retie shoelaces, check light switches are turned off or doors are locked. Others describe the “torture” of having to perform rituals before leaving home or having to constantly wash their hands.Until the book was published, most people with OCD were unaware that others suffered similarly, and many were so embarrassed by their behaviour that they hid it from family and friends
What has conflict in Iran revealed about UK’s geopolitical standing and military readiness?
Antonia Romeo given powerful mandate to deliver No 10’s priorities
Starmer urged to limit US access to UK bases after ‘dangerous’ Trump threats
UK politics: Farage says Trump’s Iranian ‘civilisation will die’ threats went ‘way too far’– as it happened
Can Starmer maintain ‘defensive strikes’ stance as Trump escalates threats on Iran?
Reform cold calling public in bid to find ‘paper’ candidates for local elections