|
|
No one had ever seen anything like it. Kevin Samuels took the world by storm. By the time he died on May 5, 2022, of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three years old, he was on top of the world.
Kevin Samuels was a black man, born and raised in Oklahoma City. For the previous ten years he had been an image consultant, though his previous jobs included petroleum engineer, corporate sales rep. for AT&T, and waiter at high-end restaurants.
He started a channel on YouTube to talk about men's fashion. (KS talked about frames, fragrance, and footwear.) He wanted to help young black mean clean up their act. He told them to ditch their Jordans and start wearing suits. He called himself the Godfather. He saw himself as a mentor to young black men.
No one paid any attention to him. In fact, he caught a lot of heat in black YouTube for telling young men to start wearing suits.
KS would do live streams talking to black men. Every once in a while he would talk to black women. He noticed that his YouTube view counts would shoot up every time he spoke to women. It turns out that people wanted to hear Kevin Samuels talk to women. KS stopped talking to men. He started talking to women every night.
The key to this story is that KS was exactly what black women wanted. He was 6'4”. Every night he was impeccably groomed and impeccably dressed in a dark fitted suit. He was rich. He was personal friends with the most important men in black America. He was college-educated, well-spoken, dominant, and masculine. KS was black women's kryptonite.
Along came COVID. People were stuck at home with nothing to do. They found Kevin Samuels. KS became a household name when one of his videos went viral. He told a middle-aged black woman with unreasonable expectations that she was average at best.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time I would hear KS's theme song (Your Good Lies by Vividry), and I would know that it was showtime. He would start off with a monologue, and by 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time he would start taking calls from women. A huge fraction of black women hated KS, but they watched too.
On every show KS would establish that a woman was looking to marry a high-value man. All women wanted a man making at least $250,000 per year. KS would ask this question: Why would a man like that choose you?
Who supported Kevin Samuels? Black men. Kevin Samuels was telling black women what ordinary black men could not say. Everywhere KS went, black men would come up to him and thank him for his work. Men at the highest levels of black America secretly told KS that they supported him but that their careers and marriages would be in jeopardy if anyone ever found out.
It wasn't just African-American men. By the time he died, KS had fans all over the world, especially on the continent of Africa. When Black Entertainment Television had its award show last year, the crowd went wild when the photo of Kevin Samuels was shown on the screen along with other artists who had died during the previous year.
One last note. Just before the pandemic hit in March of 2020, KS had plans to hold a training class for young black men in Los Angeles in June of 2020. Of course the pandemic killed the plan. The thirty young black men were going to need to be entertained in the evenings. Where was KS going to find nice girls like that?
|
