By Leor Galil
Article Reprint
Chicago poet, activist, mentor, and multimedia educator Mike Hawkins, better known as Brother Mike, has died at age 38, according to several sources close to Hawkins. A cause of death has not yet been made public, and when the Reader contacted the office of the Cook County Medical Examiner seeking confirmation or more details, no one could help. Hawkins was one of the first mentors at Harold Washington Library’s YouMedia Center, a creative learning space for local teens that became an incubator for part of Chicago’s young hip-hop scene, largely because of Hawkins’s influence. “He was one of the first people to really believe in a lot of the up-and-comers in Chicago,” says rapper-producer Tahj “Saba” Chandler. A generation of local MCs such as Chance the Rapper, Mick Jenkins, Noname Gypsy, Lucki Ecks, Taylor Bennett, and Joey Purple have eulogized Hawkins on Twitter since news of his death broke yesterday. At the time of his passing Hawkins was helping launch MetaMedia, a multimedia space for middle-school students at McGaw YMCA in Evanston, which is set to open early next year.