When’s the last time you had a good kiki? With our social lives deeply lacking during quarantine, many of us have turned our focus inward—which proved the perfect time to indulge in some Bevelations with radio host, veteran strategist, media personality, and guaranteed good time, Bevy Smith. As Smith, a close friend of The Root’s editor-in-chief and It’s Lit! podcast co-host Danielle Belton tells us on this week’s highly entertaining episode of The Root Presents: It’s Lit!, her recently published first book, a part memoir-part self-help tome titled Bevelations: Lessons from a Mutha, Auntie, Bestie, was largely written to encourage us to lean into our entire selves—even if if means risking the identities we’ve carefully crafted for ourselves.
“So many people are still living their full-on facades and I was one of them,” Bevy admits. “You know, in the book, I go into all my personas—you know, Lil Brown Bevy, who is like the best thing ever; Bev-Ski, which is like from high school; and then my favorite girl of all time besides Lil Brown Bevy is Big Bev from Uptown, and that’s like my ‘90s hip-hop party, hot girl, spectacular self. Then there’s a Beverly Smith, Fashionista—and then there’s now Ms. Bevy Smith...She’s a kiki and a good time—and she has so much good sex!
“You know, one of the things I hate is that when I meet incredibly accomplished Black women, I find a lot of them did not have a big personal life—they had not a lot of fun,” Bevy continues. “And it’s so crazy because then it’s like, you look at it, and we’re on the same damn level! But I was out cavorting, doing all the things and, you just kept your nose to the grindstone. So if there’s anything that I would like to try and impart to younger women, it’s like, please have fun...I know you’re trying to get your MBA, I understand that you’re like trying to be, you know, make every 30 under 30 list—and I get that. But let me tell you something: You’re going to wake up one day and all of those accolades will be hollow because you’ll be like, ‘Yeah, but I did not live my life.’”
It’s just one of many “Bevelations” dropped by the always lively Bevy Smith in Episode 27 of The Root Presents: It’s Lit!: Studying the Book of Bevelations, With Bevy Smith, available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Google Podcasts, Amazon, NPR One, TuneIn, and Radio Public.