Appearing on Bevelations with Bevy Smith via Radio Andy, writer Kevin Powell revealed that he is working on his own Tupac Shakur biography.
Kevin Powell is forever linked to Tupac who covered him three times for VIBE Magazine. His most infamous one is from the April 1995 issue where Shakur was interviewed from prison. The cover has one of the most iconic Tupac’s quotes of all time, “This is my last interview. If I get killed, I want people to have the real story.”
Since early on Kevin Powell was a fan of Shakur going back to his days with Digital Underground. Powell at the time was a writer for VIBE Magazine and told the Entertainment magazine that he would love to do a write up on Shakur. VIBE instead wanted Powell to cover Snoop Dogg who at the time was the biggest Hip Hop artist in the world in 1992.
The pairing is forever embedded in Hip Hop history. Tupac trusted Powell to export his interviews exactly how it was said, and Powell took on that responsibility seriously. “I made a commitment to him. He said to me in the first interview, ‘I want you to be Alex Haley to my Malcom X’, but I remember thinking what if I want to be Malcom X,” Powell said jokingly.
“There is so much stuff about Pac on the internet and I’m glad you’re telling your story,” Kevin Powell explained to host Bevy Smith. “People like us who are really cultural protectors need to tell the real story about people that we have encountered.”
A new docuseries about the life of Tupac and his mother Afeni Shakur is slated for the fall of 2022. The five-part series which is set to debut on FX and is directed by Allen Hughes and his brother Albert Hughes. (View: Tupac, Afeni Docuseries’ “Dear Mama” Teaser Premieres On Mother’s Day)
Powell who has been working on the biography for years now, has finally set his mind to completing the difficult project. “It’s a lot of work. A lot of work. Where I can’t really paint the whole picture of him, because he was a Gemini. He was the son of a Black Panther. He was born uptown in Harlem,” Powell said. “I literally said let me piece all this together and I’ve learned so much that I didn’t even know about Tupac.”
The Tupac Shakur biography by Kevin Powell does not have an official release date as of this writing.
