SHARE MY LIFE

An R&B star looks into his heart.

Making his book debut with a raw memoir, three-time Grammy nominee Kem, assisted by veteran music writer and co-author Ritz, recounts his rocky journey from self-destructive behavior to professional acclaim. Born Kim Owens in 1969, Kem was a shy child who felt unloved by his father and often ignored by his mother, who, for many years, was a functioning alcoholic. By the time he was a teenager, he tried to dull his pain with drugs and alcohol. In high school, he recalls, “smoking weed and drinking beer became an every-day thing. Sometimes before school, sometimes after. My dependency grew gradually but steadily.” He remembers his senior year through an “alcoholic fog.” After his father threw him out, he lived on the streets, stealing, lying, and “sinking into a quicksand of self-loathing.” When he landed in a Salvation Army shelter, he knew he had hit rock bottom. One of the residents knew, too, and urged Kem to attend a Twelve Steps meeting with him. It proved transformative. The program “was the first time in my life when I was consciously aware of searching for something. I was searching to better myself. Searching for a way to stop the hemorrhaging, the bleeding out of my life into this bottomless pit of despair.” Kem made a commitment to sobriety that, he realizes, “depends on daily spiritual maintenance,” including prayer, meditation, and music, which had always been a passion. He found inspiration in New Age churches, where he heard “God’s inspiration in all music.” Marianne Williamson, senior minister at one church, invited him to join her choir, which turned out to be an exhilarating experience for him and led to other public performances. In the 1990s, determined to write an album, he began an arduous process “to unearth the music buried in my heart”—a process that has earned him many accolades.

A forthright chronicle of hard-won success.