Q&A with MK Asante: Overcoming 'Killadelphia'

Despite having a renowned scholar for a dad and a respected gang member for a brother, MK Asante still wasn’t protected from the gritty, drug-infested, gang-ridden violence of “Killadelphia, Pistolvania” in the ’90s.

On the outside, Asante’s a smart kid, growing up in an Afrocentric home in Philadelphia in the shadow of his dad: professor and author Dr. Molefi Kete Asante.

But Asante hates school. He’s got a brother in prison, a mentally ill sister and a mother who checked into a psychiatric hospital. When his dad walks out, he drops out of school, joins a gang, straps on a gun and hits the streets selling drugs, until he slips up on a deal and goes into hiding.

Three books, a film with Maya Angelou and a music collaboration with Talib Kweli later, and Asante, 30, now a professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, credits those Killadelphia streets for who he is today in his memoir “Buck.”

amNewYork spoke with him.