Fab 5 Freddy doesn't do anything halfway. The man who bridged uptown graffiti with downtown punk also introduced hip-hop to mainstream America through Yo! MTV Raps. Immortalized by Debbie Harry in Blondie's “Rapture” with that iconic line “Fab Five Freddy told me everybody's fly,” he has spent his life creating and connecting cultures that weren't supposed to mix.
He tells me cannabis has always been in every creative space, woven through every movement he has helped shape. “Cannabis was always there, if you will,” Fab 5 Freddy says with a chuckle, “It was always at the party, no matter what party it was. Like, my entire life.”
Cannabis Household
Growing up in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, Fab's relationship with the plant started at home. His father was an accountant with an affinity for revolutionary change. He was even in the room when Malcolm X was assassinated.
“I grew up in what I like to call a cannabis household,” he explains. “My dad was close to the New York City jazz scene from when he was a kid growing up, and he was a cannabis user my entire life.”
His exploration of the downtown New York scene of the late '70s and early '80s elevated his appreciation. Through Blondie's Chris Stein and the writer Glenn O'Brien, an early High Times editor, Fab got his first taste of truly exceptional cannabis.
“Through Glenn and through Chris, who smoked that good weed on the regular, it would blow my mind like how the weed looked, bright green,” he recalls. “We were growing up when most of the weed was brownish looking Mexican, Colombian, Jamaican, oftentimes pressed brick weed full of seeds and stems that everybody would typically clean out on a record album.”
The California and Hawaiian strains that his new friends were smoking were a revelation. “Meeting those guys was the first time I got exposed to the super next-level kind of cannabis strains typical now,” says Fab. “Nobody had it.”
The Blondie Connection
How Fab ended up name-checked in a number-one record is the kind of serendipity that defined New York's creative underground. His voracious pursuit of fine art carried him from tagging subway cars with Lee Quiñones into the downtown new wave, punk and art scene, as Stein and Debbie Harry became mentors and patrons, and the first people to introduce him to Andy Warhol.
Fab kept telling them about this new music coming out of the Bronx. It wasn't yet called hip-hop. It was graffiti, breakdancing, DJing, and rapping, all colliding with other inner-city forms of expression at once.
“They totally believed all these wild ideas I had, and they backed me up. So out of that came the record ‘Rapture,' which totally blew my mind. I never thought that was for real. Even when they played it for me, I thought it was a goof they did in the studio to show me they got my message.” With less than a handful of rap records out at that time, the culture was crossing over.
Reefer Songs
Years before he ever thought about a cannabis documentary, Fab found something that shaped his understanding of the plant's place in American music.
“I saw a record at J&R Music, a popular record store, called ‘Reefer Songs,' basically 15 jazz songs done in the '30s,” he says. “I bought this record as a young teen. I come home to my dad and his friends, who were home smoking and playing jazz. I'm like, ‘Dad, what's this all about? And what is this ‘mezz'?”
His father and friends cracked up. They told him about Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, a white clarinet player whose weed was so consistently excellent that his name became slang. “If your weed is good, you would say, ‘Man, that's the mezz.'” That thread between cannabis and America's music would become the backbone of his documentary.
Grass Is Greener
The film, Grass is Greener, debuted on Netflix on 4/20 in 2019. Today, the film is the most comprehensive and high-profile piece of media to document both the intersection of black culture and cannabis, as well as the history of cannabis prohibition in the United States.
“Black folks did have a lot to do with popularizing cannabis in America because we were making jazz music and songs about the plant,” Fab recalls. From Louis Armstrong to the hip-hop luminaries like Snoop Dogg, Redman, and Method Man, who he'd introduced to America on his iconic program, Yo! MTV Raps.
“And of course, I had to look at the criminal justice side of cannabis, and all the injustice and people being locked up and thrown in jail,” Fab says. “As cannabis users, we had to be very careful. You can go to jail, and lives could be ruined. That was a part of cannabis culture.”
Throughout his years researching and directing the film, he came to understand just how deeply communities had been affected. “I was shocked to learn that people caught with cannabis could be kicked out of public housing and lose their kids if they're on public assistance.”
Bernard Noble
Making the film, Fab needed a case that showed how broken America's cannabis policies had been. He found Bernard Noble's story, arrested in New Orleans and given a 13-year hard labor prison sentence for the equivalent of two joints. “At that time, he was still in prison. Bernard had been in prison for seven years,” Fab recalls. “Luckily, people were campaigning to get him out. His case had become celebrated at that time.”
When Fab interviewed Bernard's mother and three sisters for the film, they broke down, remembering a promise that Bernard could attend his brother's funeral, a promise never kept. “When Bernard got parole, we flew back to Louisiana to film him walking out of prison into his family's arms. It was a moment, man.”
Fab went on to found the social-equity cannabis brand B Noble, working with veteran legacy trapper Ron Samuel, who was also inspired by Bernard's story. Now available in nine states, the brand takes care of Bernard and donates a percentage of its revenue to organizations that help people victimized by cannabis laws like Bernard was. In New York, that's the Bronx Defenders. “I wanted to raise awareness that this stuff was still going on,” Fab says. “That people could be thrown in prison for years over something that's now legal in half the country and a growing multi-billion dollar business.”
The New York Market
Fab's enthusiasm for New York is palpable. “Because the intent in New York has been so special to rectify some of the obvious wrongs,” he says. “People who were the victims of this, who were arrested and whose lives were turned upside down, have gotten the first shot at these licenses.”
The result, he argues, is remarkable: “New York now has the largest number of people of color, and other people who have been victims, owning dispensaries, cultivating, and creating brands.” When he meets these new players in the business, the conversations hit different. “‘Yo, Fab, I've been in and out of prison. I still can't believe this is happening.' And I go, dude, I feel the same way.”
He keeps the rough road in perspective. “When you do new pioneering shit, best believe you're going to be tripping and stumbling and falling in potholes. You've got to figure out a way to continue on your journey, baby. Because that's what this game is built on.”
Cannabis and Creativity
I ask how cannabis has shaped his creative process. “Cannabis has always been there. It doesn't make you creative, but it aids the process.” He points to the improvisational heart of jazz. “To lay back and just go into your own freestyle amidst the solo on whatever your instrument is, cannabis puts you in a better flow state to make that happen.”
“That's why Louis Armstrong, who's one of the architects of jazz, is so revered. You have to imagine how this aided that ability. The improvisation. Weed helps that.”
What's Hot
Earlier this Spring, his monumental memoir dropped, titled, what else, Everybody's Fly: A Life of Art, Music and Changing The Future. “Growing up in Bed Stuy, Blondie, I go deep into all of that. Linking up with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, all my art buddies. The making of hip-hop's first movie (Wild Style). All of this shit I go deep into.”
B Noble is ramping up. A 2g vape that recreates New York Sour Diesel is available now through the brand's licensing partner, Curaleaf and more SKU's on the way. They also independently launched a female-focused brand in New York, Jungle Gurl that's blowing up. They are expanding internationally, now licensed in Germany, partnered with a medical company in England, and opening a medical dispensaries in Nairobi, Kenya and Uganda.
“Our story, there's nothing that can be realer,” Fab says. “Here's what we're about. Here's our story. And our weed is fire. Come check us.”
The Architect
Fab 5 Freddy built bridges everywhere: between cultures, between eras, between the underground and the mainstream. From graffiti to galleries, block parties to MTV, to the legacy market and licensed dispensaries. Cannabis was there the whole time, the steady presence that helped creativity flow and brought communities together, and also gave the system an excuse to lock up millions of Black and brown people.
Fab 5 Freddy has always bridged worlds. Now he's bridging one more: helping the plant that accompanied so much cultural innovation find its legitimate place in American society.
