With words and golden buzzer, Central Valley’s Leake makes waves in ‘America’s Got Talent’
Brandon Leake is a name America is just getting to know, but he’s been seen around Sacramento for years.
Maybe you saw him at Hot Poetry in the Park through the Sacramento Poetry Center. Or performing with the Sacramento Slam Team in 2015. Maybe you heard him on the first night of his 18-month tour, which started in Sacramento. Or you might have happened to catch him at Luna’s Cafe or Queen Sheba some night. Maybe you met him at a poetry workshop he was teaching.
Right now you can see him on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” performing Tuesday and Wednesday night. He’ll compete in the finals after the second part of the semifinals next week. In 15 seasons of the show, Leake is the first contestant to make it on the show for spoken word. It’s been quite a journey to get there, and he has made the most of every stop.
Leake was born and raised in Stockton by his mother, Carla Leake-Gibson. He fell in love with basketball. He ended up attending a magnet school.
His passion for poetry was born out of a love for R&B and a lack of ability to sing. His poems were lyrics in his head, without music. Somewhere in his middle school years, Leake started getting manga comic books. He would trace the pictures and make his own stories. Then he started to draw his own pictures with his stories. Eventually, he dropped the illustrations altogether and focused on the writing. He went “from the writing of the stories, to then writing poems in middle school, to continuing to write them in high school but being afraid to share them,” Leake said. “Being an athlete writing poetry in the mid to late 2000s — nuance wasn’t necessarily a big word we used.”
So he kept the poetry quiet until college.
But Leake was in love with poetry.
He continued to pursue education at Simpson University in Redding. Once there he founded a group he named, “Called to Move.” It was an opportunity for him and a small group of artists to share their gifts, and inspire one another to keep creating artwork that didn’t always get a chance to shine.
“It was me and a bunch of other poets, rappers, dancers, painters — just an eclectic group of us,” he said.
The group started hosting open mic nights for 10-15 people, and by their last night they had an audience of 300. Called to Move used its popularity to raise money for kids who dealt with domestic abuse to go to summer camps and be kids. But the most powerful experience was teaming up with the schools to push a diversity initiative.
It had all just been writing, until he was asked by a campus pastor one week to share a poem in chapel.
“I had a poem that was three minutes and 45 seconds, and I was so nervous when I walked on stage I ended up saying it in two minutes and 30 seconds,” he said.
That was the beginning. When he really began sharing his work was after the death of his best friend.
“We had an open mic that our psychology department on campus hosted,” Leake said, “It was a tragedy that he passed away, and I wrote a poem about him and said ‘I’m going to go share it.’”
People were moved by it. As he looks back now, he knows it wasn’t his best writing, but it was honest.
Honesty may be one of Leake’s calling cards when it comes to his work, and it’s a way for him to heal to speak those feelings and emotions.
“The Good Book says ‘The power of life and death lie on the tongue.’ I believe that poetry is one of the most potent ways to do one of two things: Either mask pain or heal pain,” he said.
Leake lived this out in his audition piece for “America’s Got Talent.”
“Puff,” which was about losing his sister when he was a child, was his debut piece. At one point in the performance he said, “That’s the cost of love; caring for someone so much that you can’t imagine life without them. Staring at a grave like, ‘How ‘bout I trade my six feet for yours?’ But that’s not real.”
It’s something many of us can relate to, but as he found out during the AGT judge’s reactions, Sofia Vergara had lost her brother the same year Leake lost his sister.
The performance was so powerful that Howie Mandel said, “There was something more, so raw. Just a raw heart beating in front of us. We feel your pain. We feel your love and you moved me to do this,” as he pushed the button for the “golden buzzer,” which fans of AGT know sends the contestant through to the final rounds without having to compete.
Each judge on the show is only given one chance to use the “golden buzzer” in the season. While Leake’s reaction to the rain of golden confetti after Mandel hit that buzzer is visibly pure joy, it is not necessarily surprise — Leake had a dream weeks before that he would get that buzzer and told his wife, Anna, who also thought he would get the golden buzzer.
Leake had actually auditioned for “America’s Got Talent” before, in 2017, but didn’t make the show. After that he got married and decided to take one year off of performing to focus on being a husband.
“My times of resting and getting away from the art so I can have something new to create have always brought me back to this point of recalibrating, and to this show, honestly,” Leake said.
Leake took his time before auditioning again. He studied comedians like Dave Chapelle, Richard Pryor, and Bernie Mac to learn more about timing and setting up punchlines. He listened to artists like Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and others to focus on content. He looked at poets like Fiveology, Mo Browne, Jessica Care Moore, Saul Williams, Taalam Acey and Black Ice to learn more about carefully crafting his words and story. He listened to battle rap to hear writers like Loaded Lux and Daylyt and their thought provoking words.
“After 2017, I learned the difference between loving your art, and respecting your art. I loved poetry enough to write it; I didn’t respect it enough to write it well,” said Leake of the lessons he learned during his break. Viewers of AGT and the over 6 million people who have watched his audition on YouTube would likely agree he is still respecting his art.
“Stillness can breathe a lot of beauty. ... I call it my winter season. In winter, people associate things with dying, but no — in winter, things prepare to grow,” he said.
Leake is ready to grow. Last week he performed in the quarterfinals for AGT. He did a piece directed at his mother called “Pookie.” In this piece, Leake describes what it was like to truly understand the fear a mother has sending her Black son out the door every time he leaves. To his mother, he is her “Pookie,” but he can also see himself in Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor or Jacob Blake. The gut-wrenching bit of spoken word on racism was put up to “America’s Got Talent” viewer votes and earned him a spot in the 2020 semifinals.
While it is a performance, Leake assures us that what viewers see is authentically him. Every poem he chooses is an honest and transparent look into his life. The words he shares are words that have brought him healing like a balm, as he hopes they will do for others.
He admits that his first two performances maybe didn’t leave the audience feeling very positive, but this week he says, “I promise to give America a little sliver of hope.”
Surely hope is something we could all use in these times. Leake hopes viewers will take that promise and give just a moment of their time to vote for him to continue on his “America’s Got Talent” journey.
Watch it
“America’s Got Talent”
Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 8 p.m., NBC
This story was originally published September 8, 2020 at 4:00 AM with the headline "With words and golden buzzer, Central Valley’s Leake makes waves in ‘America’s Got Talent’."