Joey Pinkney: Let’s start at the end of your journey and work our way back to your humble beginnings. When it’s all said and done, what do you want your legacy to be? What do you want people to know and remember about you and your creative output?

G.P.A.: First, thank you for this interview. I want the world to know that a Black Man from the South Side of Chicago is the greatest combination of talent that the world has not seen.

I’m not pretty. I’m not White. I’m not light. Nothing that society deems whatsoever to be as great as I am, but I am.

Joey Pinkney: What has the South Side given you that you might not have been able to get had you grown up anywhere else?

G.P.A.: The South Side has that mixture of splendor and roughness. I lived close to Lake Michigan, so I saw the magnificent water. But it is also colder by the lake. I am the embodiment of that.

Joey Pinkney: Before I met you through your books, I met you through your name – G.P.A.. The first thing I remember about you from back in the day is your stage name G.P.A.. I can’t remember if you approached me first or someone like a publicist approached me on your behalf, but I remember reading the name G.P.A. and thinking that’s a unique name. The name became even more interesting when I found out it stood for Greatest Poet Alive. How do you think you have grown into that name?

G.P.A.: Yeah, I remember that. I believe that G.P.A. has evolved into something else. The fact that I am a champion storyteller, an actor and a host of a long-running show known as Poetry’s Love Letter, I am more than a poet. My impact is similar to Kanye West’s in a lot of ways. People don’t like it, but they can not get around it, rather me.

Joey Pinkney: It’s interesting that you mention Kanye West. Both of you are from Chicago, both of you are driven and both of you are considered to be egotistical. How do you define that energy in you that others see as being conceit, ego or hubris? Continue reading Joey Pinkney interviews James Gordon aka G.P.A. →