Name: Everybody’s Fly: Art, Music, and Changing the Culture — Fab 5 Freddy and Theaster Gates
Start: 2026-03-19T19:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-03-19T20:30:00-05:00
Location: Evanston Township High School (ETHS)

$Everybody\u2019s Fly: Art, Music, and Changing the Culture \u2014 Fab 5 Freddy and Theaster Gates$

Bonus Book Giveaway: FAN is giving away copies of "Everybody’s Fly" to attendees, while supplies last.
Blondie’s declaration on their 1980 hit “Rapture” introduced listeners around the world to Fred Brathwaite, also known as Fab 5 Freddy, a pioneering cultural icon whose fearless creativity reshaped the worlds of art, style, and music. Next spring, Viking is proud to publish his electrifying memoir "Everybody’s Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture."
"Everybody’s Fly" is an essential, street-level cultural history from one of our most curious, passionate, and inspiring minds still working today. Picking up where Patti Smith’s (FAN '19) "Just Kids" leaves off, it offers an intimate look into how New York’s underground art and music scene—guided by Fab’s singular vision of what could be possible— irrevocably transformed mainstream culture from the late 1970s to today.
Because Fab doesn’t just have a great story—he is the story. Name a seismic cultural shift of the last five decades, and chances are, he wasn’t just there—he was making it happen. He’s the graffiti artist who turned subway tags into fine art, showing his work most recently at the Saatchi Gallery in London; the visionary behind the first hip-hop movie; the bridge between Jean-Michel Basquiat and the downtown punk scene; the first person to take rap global on MTV as the original host of Yo! MTV Raps; the director behind iconic music videos for Snoop Dog, Nas, Queen Latifah, and KRS-One; and, of course, the inspiration for the opening rhyme of Blondie’s number one smash hit “Rapture”—the song that propelled hip-hop from the Bronx to popular culture for the first time. With a spirit of joyful creativity, he shattered racial and artistic boundaries, bridging worlds and bringing underground movements to the mainstream.
Vibrant, rhapsodic, and compulsively readable, "Everybody’s Fly" is a love letter to the art of seeing, a fascinating account of an inimitable creative life, and a celebration of what it means to shape culture.
Fab will be in conversation with Theaster Gates, world-renowned artist, archivist, social innovator, and professor and Special Advisor to the President at the University of Chicago. Gates creates work that focuses on space theory and land development, sculpture, and performance.
This event is suitable for youth ages 12 and up. It will be recorded but not live streamed and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.
Sponsored by FAN, in partnership with The Avery Coonley School, Avoca D37, Baker Demonstration School, Beacon Academy, Bennett Day School, Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, Brickton Montessori School, British International School of Chicago, Catherine Cook School, Compass Health Center, Countryside Day School, Evanston Scholars, Evanston Township HS D202, Family Service Center, Foundation 65, The Frances Xavier Warde School, Francis W. Parker School, Glenview Public Library, Gorton Center, Hyde Park Day School, Illinois Student Assistance Commission, Kenilworth D38, Lake Bluff D65, Lake Forest Community High School D115, Latin School of Chicago, Leo Catholic High School, Libertyville D70, Lycée Français de Chicago, North Shore Country Day, Northwestern University Office of Neighborhood and Community Relations, Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy, Pope John XXIII School, Regina Dominican High School, Resurrection College Prep High School, Rogers Park Montessori School, Roycemore School, Santa Clara University School of Law, Science & Arts Academy, The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, Stevenson High School D125, Township High School D113, Township High School D214, TrueNorth Educational Cooperative #804, Wilmette Public Library, Woodlands Academy, Youth & Opportunity United.