Phase 2
August 2, 1955 – December 12, 2019
Phase 2, who in the early 1970s was one of the most prolific, inventive and emulated New York graffiti writers, and who later produced early hip-hop’s most innovative fliers, died on Dec. 12 [2019] at a nursing and rehabilitation center in the Bronx. He was 64.
…In the South Bronx at the dawn of the 1970s, all the creative components that would coalesce into what became widely known as hip-hop were beginning to take shape. At the center of them all was Phase 2, an intuitive, disruptive talent who first made his mark as a writer of graffiti — although he hated the term. He began writing graffiti in October 1971, inspired by a cousin, who went by the name Lee 163d. The form was evolving rapidly, with each day delivering a fresh set of artworks on train lines across the city. Phase 2 was best known as the pioneer of softies — bubble-style letters that helped usher graffiti away from simple tags and toward full-fledged artworks. He painted a variety of substyles of these letters, with a name for each: “squish luscious,” “phasemagorical phantastic” and so on. Many innovations that became commonplace, like loops and arrows, are credited to Phase 2.
