Words by Sacha Jenkins SHR / FEATURES / August 5, 2013 / 1 Comment and 0 ReactionsEasy has been writing his name on the streets of New York since the ’80s. He retired some years ago, but now he’s un-retired. Son is all city.
Easy is a nickname that was given to me by females when I was in school. Because I was kinda laid-back and cool. It was like “Hey, Easy.” I was cool with it. I’m never mad at the ladies. I first started writing in 1982 under the name of LC. My brother got me into graffiti. I was totally against it at first — I wasn’t into writing on trains or property. But I went out on a little journey with my brother on the trains; I put my name up. Boom, boom, boom! I’d seen my tags when I was going to school one day and I was like “wow.” From that day on, I started loving this art form.
Josh 5 and Gast were my first partners. After that, it was me and Joz. And then TeKay TNR got involved … That was when we just lost our minds. We focused on the trains — mainly the 3 line — and the streets. But back in the ‘80s, we got a lot of attention on the streets because there weren’t a lot of people doing it at the time. And we were going pretty hard.
Me, Josh 5 and Gast started doing streets in 1983. As far as guys who were doing streets, back in the ‘80s you had Pre Sweet, Flasher, OE, Prince EA, Bio, Become Catholic, Arise, Lil Man, Trim, Trech, Chino BYI, Saint TMR. The streets were dangerous back then. New York was the wild, wild west. The crack era was in full swing.
You could be putting your name up on a wall but someone else might be thinking you’re putting up a sign to kill somebody … We got chased by tons of people, man. We would go to suburban areas where people were pretty much racist. Then they would call the cops on us and make up bogus accusations.
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