Brandon Leake is your new ‘AGT’ winner! The season 15 champion talked EXCLUSIVELY with HL about his plans for his Las Vegas show and the thoughtful way he’s going to spend his $1 million prize.
Brandon Leake was crowned the winner of America’s Got Talent season 15 during the Sept. 23 finale. Brandon made AGT history as the first spoken word artist to win the show. He has captivated us ever since his powerful audition, which earned Howie Mandel’s Golden Buzzer. As the AGT winner, Brandon gets a headline slot in a Vegas show and $1 million. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Brandon about what to expect in his future show.
“Look forward to a beautiful mixture of performances mixed into the spoken word,” Brandon told HollywoodLife. “Digital animation to live painting and graffiti art to dancing and live music and instrumentation. There is going to be a lot of things that will be brought into this story that we are going to narrate over the course of the show.”
As for how he’ll spend some of his new cash, Brandon said that he really wants to “invest back into my community, back in South Stockton. I want to bring free poetry workshops back to the youth. I want them to start writing to deal with some of the traumas that they deal with in their neighborhood. I want to open a local grocery store in Southside Stockton so we can help the food desert that is there.” He also added that he will be “sending a charitable donation out to Louisville and some justice organizations for Breonna Taylor. Got to keep on doing the good fight and receive justice for that scenario!”
Brandon’s gift of spoken word is truly amazing. He inspires and moves us with his words. He revealed his advice for up-and-coming spoken word artists.
“My biggest advice is to not only love your art but to respect it and the differentiation between those two,” Brandon told HollywoodLife. He said to “study other writers” and “people who don’t do poetry.” Brandon studied comedians like Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle, as well as hip hop artists like Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, and Wale. “I study a wide array of people who have artistic expression for the sake of being able to learn to implement and put in my craft,” he continued. “So any spoken word artist that wants to really do this there is a door open now, but you have to be prepared to walk through it because if you come through unprepared, you will get a response that a person who is unprepared deserves to get.”