On the surface, Kevin Powell could be considered one of reality television’s first breakout stars due to his role on MTV’s The Real World. However, 90s Hip Hop heads with a loyal subscription to Vibe may remember him more as the publication’s original senior writer. His role in conducting some of Tupac’s most iconic interviews have become the stuff of legends. Others may call him a player in escalating the media driven West Coast vs. East Coast rivalry that allegedly ended the life of both Pac and Biggie. Speaking on the phone with him, he’s obviously far removed from those days. Dedicating his life to activism, something he’s done since his days as an undergrad at Rutgers University, he recently released his memoir The Education Of Kevin Powell: A Boy’s Journey Into Manhood. Detailing his life being raised by a single mother in New Jersey to running for Congress among others, the book is equal parts autobiography and a motivational look into overcoming incredible obstacles.
Speaking with DX, Powell explains his relationship with Tupac, East Coast Vs. West Coast beef and who he wants reading The Education Of Kevin Powell.
Powell Talks The Change He Saw In Tupac Following The Rikers Island Interview For Vibe
DX: You mention in the book how different people looked at you after your time on The Real World as the “angry black man” before discovering Tupac being a fan. Was that a sigh of relief considering the public perception of you?
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Kevin Powell: Well, it was cool. We mutually respected each other. I’ll be honest with you. The whole Vibe and MTV years for me; I still have people come up to me and talk about them being a kid at the time or teenager. You just never know when you do the work or when you’re in these public spaces how people are seeing you. You never know who you’re speaking for. It’s really humbling with what people have said through the years. I just rolled with it. I’m just happy to do my work as an activist and writer.
DX: What was it like interviewing Tupac at the “California Love” set and experiencing him after his signing to Death Row as opposed to the iconic Rikers Island interview?
Kevin Powell: Pac was only 25 when he got killed. That’s a young person. Everybody has this idea that Tupac was this old man. He didn’t make it to 30 and didn’t even make it past 25. Now that I’m in my 40s having lived through some craziness in my own 20s and early 30s, I can say that at that period, you’re still forming. Think about it, Pac was in the jail on the East Coast and people were saying crazy things about him. People were dissing him on the radio and saying he got raped in jail. At some point, he was like, I’m going to go where people will respect me, which is the West Coast. That was his mentality and it was a survival tactic. Maybe he knew he wasn’t going to have a long life but it was a survival tactic. He felt like he had to do it. It was kind of surreal because the last time I had seen him was the famous Rikers Island interview. This was a totally different person. People don’t remember this, but Pac was released around the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March of October 1995. I remember hearing rumors that he was going to make an appearance. That’s how big it was that he was getting out of jail. He was like a cult figure.
DX: The most shocking realizations came from me growing up with everyone saying Vibe escalated the East Coast vs. West Coast beef. However, you mention doing everything in your power to de-escalate things while covering what was actually happening from trying to reason with the NAACP before things got heated or not telling anyone about Faith Evans’s visits to the Death Row offices. What’s it like being blamed for something that essentially wasn’t your fault?
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Kevin Powell: It’s really not a lot of people saying that. Just people speaking out of ignorance. One, they don’t know history in terms of divide and conquer among black people. That’s going all the way back to Africa when slavery started. Tupac, Biggie, Suge Knight, Diddy, East Coast, West Coast, that’s not new at all. It’s called the house nigga and field nigga. People need to go back and listen to Malcolm X’s speech from 1963 in “Message To The Grassroots.” He talks about the same thing. About the legacy of divide and conquer. You’ve read enough of my book to know that I was active in college and all the things I was absorbing. I knew of all that was going on. I knew this was intentional. You couldn’t say exactly who was manipulating this and why this was manipulated. But it was clear to me that it was all being manipulated. I don’t take people seriously when they say these things because they’re speaking out of ignorance. You and I both know that in LA and New York, there are Bloods and Crips fighting each other. There are people in The Bay Area who don’t like people from LA or people from Brooklyn that don’t like people from Harlem. That’s all slave mentality. Even when people say, “you started this and that,” that’s a slave mentality. I don’t want to be a slave so I don’t want to participate in that kind of conversation. It’s much bigger than what people can imagine. [In] a lot of ways, I feel it was intentional to divide people so they can crumble and turn Hip Hop into something else. The question people have to figure out for themselves if they’re really serious about an answer is, Why did it happen and why would someone do something like this?” Read man and learn some history. Then you’ll become more knowledgeable and a critical thinker before getting caught up in this publication or this radio station. To be honest, you nor I own the East Coast or West Coast. People are fighting over housing projects they don’t own. What are we doing here, man?
When I say in the book I was simply documenting, yes I was intrigued by and respected who Tupac was so I continued on with the story. That’s why intentionally on the Death Row cover story, I said I reached out to some folks who were at the NAACP at the time and said, “Hey, we have to do something about this.” I did that purposely in the piece to say, “Hey, we have to think about what’s going on here.” And sure enough, look what happened? First Tupac and Biggie get killed. We still don’t know all these years [later] what happened. You don’t blame that on a publication or radio station. Were some people ignorant and deserve to share the blame for it? Oh yeah. But, it’s so much bigger, like Dead Prez said, than Hip Hop. And, I’m just going to leave it at that.
Powell Explains Past Mistakes
DX: One of the most interesting points you make is covering Hip Hop through a lens that humanizes and contextualizes black men. How important was that for you?
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Kevin Powell: It was incredibly important because my training, as you see reading, was through news reporting and then my activism years during college. So, I knew coming in that I had a responsibility and I still do years later to provide the balanced coverage you don’t often see in regards to black people, people of color, young people and the Hip Hop generation. A lot of times, it’s biased, racist and sexist. I knew that’s what I wanted to do. That’s what I did to the best of my ability. When I was in that space, I never intended to be a music journalist. I wanted to be an investigative reporter for The Washington Post. That was the vision for myself. It just kind of happened and it was exciting. Everything happens for a reason and helped fuel the work I do now as an activist. I still write. I blog but don’t interview people that much anymore, but it all helped a lot. As you finish the book, you’ll see how I ended on this path of service to others. It’s all connected. You say you want to be a journalist, that means providing information to a particular community. That’s a service and I still do the same thing, but in a different way.
DX: There’s a moment in the book where your time as a high-profile writer at Vibe sort of spirals out of control. Looking back, do you see where the mistakes were made?
Kevin Powell: You have to think about it. You give any young person — look at Chris Brown or Justin Bieber, Tupac, Lindsay Lohan and the list goes on. You live in LA so you understand. Nothing really prepares you for notoriety, fame, celebrity and becoming a public figure. There’s no toolbox you get. Now you’re known and this is how you handle it. No, you get thrown out there. So, all these issues you had before all of that are still there.
I was the same kid from the ghetto who had a single mother with a grade school education who was abandoned by his father. I had to battle depression. That didn’t change because I happened to write a little bit. Those issues get magnified when you get this so called status. I don’t care about that stuff now, but when you’re young, it’s addictive and goes really fast. My assistant is 23-years-old and she’ll be coming with me in a couple of weeks when I come out to LA. She was born in 1993 and her mom is a Tupac fan. She asked me, “How fast did it move” because she’s taking it all in. She literally graduated from college and started working with me in June. She’s taking all this media I’m doing in and watching how I’m just rolling with it because I’ve been doing it for a long time. The difference is that I appreciate all of this now. I’m very humble and grateful for it. I treat every media outlet the same no matter who you are. I say thank you to everyone because I really don’t take this for granted. And, I’m enjoying it. Back then, everything happened mad fast. Everything was warped speed. We were just grinding. You know, you work at a publication and you’re constantly grinding out articles, videos and photo shoots. You really don’t have a lot of time to process all of that. It’s overwhelming. It was inevitable that it crashed and burned.
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I’m actually glad that it did because I had to go through all of these issues. I have no regrets about anything that’s happened in my life. You’ll see when you get to the end of the book that things happen and you have to deal with it. It’s harsh when you go through it. There were really dark days for me. But, I can also tell you, it’s through that period that I became a deacon, why I don’t drink or smoke, why I treat women with the utmost respect and do things like run marathons. I treated my body like a garbage can back then, brother. You get caught up. I’m one of the lucky ones who survived it. I know people who barely made it out of their 20s or dropped dead in their 30s and 40s. These all were industry people. You may know some of the people I’m talking about. Some have even committed suicide. It’s really deep like that.
The Moment Tupac Wanted Powell To Be The Alex Haley To His Malcolm X
DX: I know you’ve been critical of certain aspects of Hip Hop and the music industry. Recently, I just wrote an editorial about Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” being this generation’s “We Shall Overcome.” Do mainstream artists like him, J Cole or even Wale give you hope?
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Kevin Powell: Thank God, I’m getting tired of “We Shall Overcome.” Yeah, sir, with all due respect, I have hope. I wouldn’t be doing what I do if I didn’t have any hope or belief that things will be alright. I’m in the tradition of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman had hope, which is how she escaped from slavery and came back to help free others. She freed about one thousand slaves. If you don’t have hope, you can’t do stuff like that. My mother with an eighth-grade education raised me by herself because she had hope. Especially after my dad was like F-y’all, I’m out; peace. That’s instilled in me. I don’t know too many people who don’t have hope. You have to have hope. I’m inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and any young person. I’m inspired by any young man who wants to read my book because I wrote it for them and all of us. I wish I had a book like this when I was coming up. I didn’t know that black writers existed when I was ten years old. Hope is not enough, you have to have action. You have to want to read, study, travel and become critical thinkers. You have to think really, really big. You just can’t do stuff enough to get by. Nothing changes if we don’t become consistent in our behavior.
If you read the book, you’d know that I became a Muslim when I was 18-years-old. Those were one of the first positive black males I got to be around back in the day. They didn’t eat pork, dressed a certain way and talked a certain way. They told me I had to change the way I saw myself. You have to see yourself as Godlike. That’s what is missing. You know I’m a Hip Hop head till I die. I’m always going to be a Hip Hop head. I also understand I’m not a nigga and I don’t want to represent that in any way. We’ve all used it and heard it because I’ve been cursing since I was a kid. You have to at some point at 16, 18, 25, 35 or 65 really have thought why we’re on this planet. What am I doing here? Am I happy for Black Lives Matter? Yes, but I see more black women than black men out there. We do these speaking engagements or forums and it’s hard for brothers to come out. It’s like yo, we’re here for y’all and you all aren’t coming out. We have to get back to standards of excellence. Everybody doesn’t have to be a speaker, everyone doesn’t have to be a writer, activist or organizer. But, you can do something.
Kendrick Lamar decided to make an album like To Pimp A Butterfly. Look at the image of the powerful black men on the cover in front of the White House. Who runs the White House now? A black man. Who built the White House? Black men. Think about that for a second. On top of that, I’m going to hire black musicians to make this album. His whole album is black empowerment. For me, he’s redefining what black manhood is. In my opinion, Kendrick’s album is the soundtrack to The Education Of Kevin Powell. It’s honest, it’s vulnerable, talks about depression [and] struggles with self-esteem and trying to love himself. What brother have you heard saying stuff like that? Kendrick gives me hope because I know he’s touching a lot of brothers with his lyrics in the same way as ‘Pac. I can go anywhere in the world, say a couple of lines from a Tupac track and they know instantly what I’m talking about. It’s the same thing with Kendrick. I didn’t know while I was in California for the “California Love” video shoot, a young Kendrick was there. It’s very deep spiritually what’s going on with him. I do see hope with him, but we have to multiply that. What happens is that we put all this pressure on one artist.
What I loved about the Golden Era was that we had KRS-One, Chuck D, Ice Cube, Queen Latifah and others. You had mad stuff coming from every angle. There wasn’t anything called positive rap, negative rap or conscious rap. Even at the end of his life, I interviewed Eazy-E and he didn’t even call his music gangsta rap. That was the media doing that. That was our reality. That’s what I want to get back to. I don’t want to go back to the 90s. Leave the 90s where it’s at. I want to get back to the balance, diversity and let’s have as many artists like Kendrick as possible so artists like him don’t feel like anomalies. That shouldn’t be different, that should become the norm. That’s my hope, is where everyone lives up to their genius.
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DX: Tupac said he wanted you to be the Alex Haley to his Malcolm X. I remember you saying you wanted to be Malcolm too. Do you still feel that way?
Kevin Powell: Nah, I want to be Kevin Powell. We have to be our own men and our own women. I remember someone saying that the book reminds him of James Baldwin and I said he has nothing to do with this book. I love James Baldwin and his works but, I’m not trying to be James Baldwin. He’s dead and gone. I’m trying to be who I am. I’m telling you, we’re starting to be too nostalgic. Just be who you’re created to be. Like Pac was meant to be in his mother’s stomach in prison. He was meant to be born one month after she got out of jail. It was meant for him to go to Harlem, The Bronx, Baltimore and Northern California. It was meant for him to live in LA and Atlanta. You have to make your own mark. If you finish my book and see the rest of what I went through, there’s no way I would want to be anybody else.
