PASADENA – KEYSHIA COLE prayed that one day she could pull herself out of poverty in Oakland — then God and the government came through.
“God and the government, those are the two highest powers, right?” says Cole, 24, who says she mysteriously received a $14,000 check from some government agency four years ago. “So I took that check and ran.”
She ran all the way to Los Angeles, where she hit it big on the music scene. Her debut album, last year’s “The Way It Is,” went platinum just eight months after its release. That disc has spawned three smash radio singles — “I Changed My Mind,” “I Should Have Cheated” and “Love.” She has also teamed with Kanye West and other hip-hop and R&B masters, building a reputation as the “next Mary J. Blige.”
This month she’s on the cover of Vibe and has a new TV series, “Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is,” which had its debut last night at 9 p.m. and regularly airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on BET. Episodes repeat at 10 p.m. Fridays.
The six-part series begins with her life in Oakland as a foster child, and highlights her efforts to help others in the foster care system. She talks openly about her drugaddicted biological mother, who gave her up for adoption soon after she was born.
“It was hard because my mother was always around when I was growing up,” Cole says in a one-on-one interview earlier this week at the Television Critics’ Association Press tour in Southern California. She looks away for a moment with a distant expression. “She just couldn’t be a mom.”
The singer wears her emotions on the outside. Her inked right arm shows a cross, a heart and a star that reflects her belief that with God and a dream you can change your life. On her neck, she has a red heart and “Have faith” tattoos.
Her slender frame and delicate features make her seem vulnerable, and when asked about her past, she forges on with her answers while gazing out with a wounded look.
Life, however, is good right now, she says.
The series was taped this past spring at various locations, including at her sold-out show in April at the Grand in San Francisco.
“The Way It Is” starts out with Cole returning to Oakland to visit childhood friends and her old neighborhood, near 84th Street. The episode offers a hard look at what her life was like while she was a student at Fremont High School.
She moved to Tracy when she was 17 and attended Tracy High School, which isn’t mentioned in the reality series.
“My brother, uncle and other relatives and friends still live in Tracy,” Cole says. “But I did spend most of my life in Oakland.”
And it is the Oakland years that offer the most spice, charting her rise from poverty and crime to a Cinderella story of fame and fortune.
When she was just 13, Cole started hanging out with rapper heavyweights Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and MC Hammer.
“My brother (aspiring rapper) Sean (Cole) met Hammer and Hammer introduced him to Tupac, and I was the little sister hanging around. That was at the height of Tupac’s career and also the height of Snoop’s career, and just to be around them kind of gave me inspiration because I saw what could be,” Cole says.
But after spending time with the rappers, she took a hard dive into reality.
“When I got back home, I went back to the gutter,” Cole says. “I went back to nothing, like, I couldn’t afford a sandwich the next day. It set in on me, and I decided to just make something (happen).”
Cole was only 2 when Yvonne Cole, who later adopted her, took her in. Her adoptive mother, a preacher at Oakland’s Laodicea Baptist Church off MacArthur Boulevard, set her on a religious path.
She’s still close to her adoptive mother and talked to her on the phone right before her press conference with TV critics.
“She taught me everything I know, that I have to grow and know there’s something out there to love,” Cole says. “All it takes to get out of (a bad situation) is to set your mind to it. I was looking for something, praying for something, to take me out of the situation I was in because I didn’t want to become just another statistic.”
But times were still bad for Cole, who struggled with a difficult life in Oakland.
“I just looked around and I saw that I didn’t want to be part of what I was. I got up and with hopes to find a better life,” Cole says. “Sometimes we’re raised in the hood, so to speak, in situations we feel we can’t overcome sometimes. I know I felt like that plenty of times. But when I decided to get up, I was 20 years old. It’s like, ‘either I’m going to stay here or I’m going to leave,’ and I left.”
The catalyst for her move was a cheating boyfriend.
“Actually, he had cheated a million times, so the first time I caught him, I didn’t up and go running,” Cole says. “But I think in life you go through things and it makes you stronger, but also it makes you aware.”
And she was aware it was time to leave, especially after that check arrived. Cole says she thinks it was money the government owed her for years in foster care or had something to do with her adoption.
She knows that letters were sent, perhaps to her adoptive mother, saying the government owed her the money. And she knows when the check came in her name, it was her ticket out of poverty. She spent $7,000 on a car and left town.
“I don’t know if I could have done it if that check hadn’t come,” Cole says. “But it did, and I took the opportunity to do something with my life.”
For more TV press tour news, visit insidebayarea.com/tv and read Susan Young’s blog at http://www.ibabuzz.com/unscripted.
