He's all "down wit it" -dissin' villains and keepin' it real with "homies". And it's all a sham.
This is William Robert "Billy Bob" Reilly, who is living his life as a first-rate poseur. His rather banal upbringing in a middle-class Jacksonville, Florida family certainly wouldn't catch the attention of X-Statix and his agent knew it. In an effort to get Billy Bob recruited to join the team, his crafty agent created a whole new and much more interesting take on the young man's life: a gangsta rapper persona with a dysfunctional family. Not only were they dysfunctional, his mother and father were "alcoholics" who turned young Billy Bob out into the streets not far from the "trailer park" where they lived. Sleazy? Sure. Deceitful? Of course. Did it work? Like a charm. After he and several others were recruited to replace X-Statix members killed in a mission gone awry. Phat didn't necessarily live up to the high-flying, high-profile lifestyle of the typical X-Statix. Expected to be out in front, soaking up all the media spotlight he could get, Phat instead hung back, content to speak his affected grammar and reap the piles of cash instead. But Spike Freeman put the kibosh on Phat's media-shy ways and forced him to get his face out there. So Phat and another media-shunning member, Vivisector, planned to steal some of the spotlight away from their teammates. Their initial plan was pretty pedestrian: show up loaded and act like bratty two-year-olds at U-Go Girl's television permiere. It semed to have some effect, but they needed to improve their juvenile efforts somehow. So they cooked up another scheme and decided to pretend to be gay. Trouble was, it turns out neither one was doing much pretending. Though they soon discovered they were in love, Phat had zero comfort with being so "out". When he reverted back to his churlish behavior. Vivisector had little choice but to dump him. Even though he wears his best "bling bling" and does his best to keep in character. Phat drops his developed persona to step up to plate for the X-Statix whenever he is needed. No matter how deep he goes to disguise his outward appearance, Phat is still a mutant willing to fight the good fight against those who would do his team harm as he was killed protecting his teammates from a bomb.
