Upstart Could Bring Hip-Hop To The Hill

It’s just after 11 a.m. on a hazy Memorial Day in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. Outside Tillie’s of Brooklyn, a trendy café near the corner of DeKalb and Vanderbilt avenues, a multiracial group of a dozen young men and women arrange themselves in a semicircle to be briefed on their itinerary for the afternoon.

Standing before them is the author and activist Kevin Powell, 42, who holds up a voter registration card. "You all have a working knowledge of local politics," Powell says. "You’re gonna hear people say, 'I don’t think my vote matters,' but you gotta have a quick response." Soon after, the lively group splits up and veers into different directions, hauling campaign literature, voter registration materials and bottles of water.

The plan is to canvass local parks and outdoor barbecues throughout Fort Greene and Bedford-Stuyvesant for the next several hours, as well as the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s annual outdoor festival, DanceAfrica. While striding briskly along Clermont Avenue wearing a brown suit, sans tie, Powell is joined by a bodyguard, a cameraperson, a videographer, and three young volunteers, one of whom deliberately lags behind with a bullhorn. As the words "Kevin Powell for Congress" – though the prospective candidate prefers the slogan KP4C ("I’m a hip-hop head," he says) – pierces through the neighborhood’s quiet air, the campaign takes its first step in what some political observers contend will be a heavily-watched contest this summer.

For Powell, the Sept. 9 primary marks a fresh chance to challenge 13-term incumbent congressman Edolphus Towns, 73, for the Democratic nomination in the 10th House of Representatives district, which includes parts of Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene along with East New York and Canarsie. In 2006, the district’s Democratic congressional primary garnered headlines with a fiercely competitive race in which Rep. Towns fended off insurgent campaigns from City Councilman Charles Barron, a Democrat representing East New York, and Assemblyman Roger Green, who left his seat representing Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in the aftermath of a 2004 conviction on petty larceny charges to focus on the unsuccessful Congressional effort. Powell threw his hat into that race as well, but pulled out after realizing his campaign wasn't quite cranked up enough to win a seat in Congress.

Now Powell is Towns’ only declared challenger, capturing instant attention when he announced his entrance into the race April 27. In the midst of a historic presidential election in which U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has effectively mobilized a new base of young voters, political scientists wonder whether the 18- to 35-year-old demographic in the city’s electorate also can be stirred by candidates who directly engage them. This is one local race where that possibility will be played out. "Kevin Powell sort of has that Obama mystique with a vibe that makes him interesting to a lot of people in that district," says Jose Sanchez, chairman of urban studies at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus. "But Towns has been in Congress for a long time and has already achieved a certain kind of leadership. Whatever revolution that Powell is trying to represent has to be even more progressive than what Towns already offers."

From pop culture to politics

With no prior experience in public office, Powell relishes his role as a political outsider. It’s ironic, given that just a few years ago the New Jersey native was a consummate insider in a far different arena – the music industry. Powell first rose to prominence in 1992 when he appeared on the first season of the MTV series "The Real World."

The first season was filmed in Manhattan, and Powell lived with a diverse group of six other 20-somethings inside a SoHo loft and instantly became one of the most notorious cast members in the show’s history for his intense outbursts and arguments over race. Yet for Powell, the image of the brooding, angst-ridden young black man with the hi-top fade that the show captured has served as a double-edged sword. "Even today, a lot of people say, 'I only thought of you as that Real World guy – I didn’t know you could talk.' That’s funny," he says with a laugh. "That’s the nature of American society where people can only see fragments of your life."

By 1993, Powell was a senior writer at Vibe Magazine, where he wrote critically-acclaimed essays and interviewed everyone from General Colin Powell (no relation) to hip-hop notables Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. Yet no subject proved more of a challenge for him to chronicle than the turbulent life and times of Tupac Shakur. In fact, the influential rapper, who was shot and killed in 1996, was so impressed by Powell’s articles about him that one year before his death, Shakur personally summoned the budding journalist to Rikers Island for an exclusive jailhouse interview. "If I get killed, I want people to get every drop. I want them to have the real story," Shakur famously told Powell in that session.