[1] Cornell University owns The Kevin Powell Archive,[2] documenting his work to date in print, photos, videos, books, handwritten notes, speeches, and select memorabilia, beginning with his appearance in the first season of the first television reality series, MTV's, The Real World: New York in 1992.

[4] He and his cousin were the first in their family to graduate high school, and in 1984 Powell enrolled in Rutgers University through the Educational Opportunity Fund, a program created during the Civil Rights Movement to benefit poor youth.

Cheryl Wall introduced him to the critical study of Harlem Renaissance writers, including Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and black female authors such as Zora Neale Hurston.

[7][8] Becoming immersed in classic African-American books such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Manchild in the Promised Land, as well as poets from the Black Arts Movement such as Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni and Amiri Baraka, he was motivated to become an activist and student leader.

[7] Powell began his journalism career while in college as a contributing reporter to the Black American newspaper, where he covered stories such as the racially motivated killing of Michael Griffith in Howard Beach, Queens.

[7] In 1992, Powell was an original cast member of The Real World: New York, the first season of the MTV reality television series in which a group of strangers live together for several months.

[18] He wrote the magazine's first profile of Snoop Dogg and went on to report on notable figures in hip hop and black music, both in print and on television as host and producer of HBOs “VIBE Five” TV segments.

[20] His third and last before the rapper's murder was the 1996, “Live From Death Row", a cover with Shakur, Suge Knight, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre in a shoot inspired by the movie poster for Goodfellas.

[25] Powell has also written reflections on his own history, such as "Letter to my Father",[26] "Me and Muhammed Ali", published in ESPN's The Undefeated blog, and "The Sexist in Me",[27] a piece that marked the beginning of his work around redefining black manhood and advocating for women and girls.

[28][29][30][31] Highlights of his articles and essays include: "Between Russell Simmons and The World and Oprah", examining the allegations of rape and sexual abuse against Simmons;[32] his 2020 profile of Georgia politician Stacey Abrams in The Washington Post Magazine;[33] The New York Times piece "A Letter from a Father to a Child", a message to his future child about surviving a world filled with fear, violence, sexism and racism;[34] and The New York Times article "In Close Quarters, a Mother of 6 Battles Coronavirus", a look at the plight of an urban family facing the COVID-19 pandemic in the Bronx.

His 2008 The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life, edited with contributions from Lasana Omar Hotep, Jeff Johnson, Byron Hurt, Dr. William Jelani Cobb, Ryan Mack, Kendrick B. Nathaniel, and Dr. Andre L. Brown and a foreword by Hill Harper, tackled issues related to political, practical, cultural, and spiritual matters, and ending violence against women and girls.

His next volume, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, and the Ghost of Dr. King, addressed the news headlines and the concerns of the times from the killing of Trayvon Martin to the Occupy Wall Street protests, the Penn State sex scandal.

"[43] In 2018, he published My Mother, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and The Last Stand of the Angry White Man,[44] in which he examines the major issues of the times, challenging society's complacency over the concerns that plague Black America, and turning an unflinching lens upon himself.

In doing so, The Washington Post says: "He poignantly sketches his journey from a violent past that included physically assaulting his girlfriend and being placed under a restraining order, through reading feminist writers, speaking, writing, talking with circles of men and many hours of therapy to emerge as an introspective ‘man,' in the very best definition of that noun - even as he acknowledges that he is still a work in progress.

[47] Powell curated a collection of essays, blogs, poetry, and journal entries that comprise the anthology, 2020: The Year that Changed America,[citation needed] published as an e-book in January, 2021.

[55] In a June 2008 interview with Theodore Hamm in The Brooklyn Rail, Powell addressed media coverage focusing on his past: "My issue of violence against women happened between 1987–1991, which is now seventeen years ago.