We kick things off with the main point: we’re previewing the ROCHESTER FRINGE FESTIVAL and hyping LAMAR THE THERAPIST’s one‑man show PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT — happening Sep 17 at 7pm and Sep 19 at 6pm at THE MUCC. I’ll tell you straight: tickets are $15 at rochesterfringe.com, which is way cheaper than a Rochester parking ticket and probably more enlightening.

Check out the episode on Just Can't Not wherever you get your podcasts or on Lunchador.org!

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/1da69cf6-6b90-4a56-9df4-c64d33740403/

Lamar is a licensed forensic mental health counselor who worked as a reentry counselor supporting folks coming home from incarceration, and the show documents that work through hip hop, spoken word, monologue and even audience participation — think powerful stories, a little theater of the oppressed, and a beat that sticks with you. We dig into why conscious hip hop and oral traditions matter, how Lamar balances heavy topics with dynamism and even a little bravado, and why this format gives his music the presence it deserves. Expect moments that make you laugh, moments that make you think, and an empowering message about doing your part and sharing your gifts. Come out to the Fringe, grab a seat at THE MUCC, and let us introduce you to a performance that’s as thoughtful as it is raw and rhythmic.

Mentioned in this episode:

Joe Bean Roasters

Visit joebeanroasters.com to get fresh roasted specialty coffee either by the bag or with a Perpetual Joy subscription!

Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just can't not.

This is part of our preview for the Rochester Fringe Festival happening September 15th to the 26th in scenic downtown Rochester, New York.

Go to rochesterfringe.com to get your tickets for as many shows as you can possibly go to.

And we're here to talk about one of those shows.

And I'm here with a guest.

Guest, why don't you introduce yourself?

Hi everyone.

Peace and prosperity.

My name is Lamar the therapist and I will be presenting my one man show Public service Announcement for this year's ESL Rochester Fringe Festival.

So your show is happening on both September 17th at 7pm, September 19th at 6pm Both shows are held over at the Muck, which is a great venue for this kind of a show.

Tickets are $15 at rochesterfringe.com Go get your tickets today.

So, Lamar, why don't you tell me a little bit about the show which is called public Service announcement.

So the title of the show comes from my background working in the criminal legal system.

So I am in fact a licensed mental health counselor in New York state.

And essentially what that means is that I have gotten my master's degree in forensic mental health counseling and I've also gone through the certification process through New York to be able to diagnose and treat people for mental health conditions.

The beginning of my career was in the criminal legal system.

And this one man show documents that.

It documents my work as a reentry counselor supporting men and women as they were returning to the community after incarceration or even to complete parole and probation.

So, you know, I definitely want to get into the one person show things.

I've thought a lot about that over the last year or so.

I've been to a lot of them.

But let's go into your.

Let's go into your background a little bit.

So why was you.

Why was therapy something that you gravitated to?

So what, what about.

That was something that was of interest.

When I was younger, I used to always love like Criminal Minds.

That was one of my favorite shows.

And I got curious about the psychology behind at that time, like serial killers and the, the kind of, more like American Psycho kind of aspects.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

And upon further thought and review, I really realized that my father was a veteran of the war on drugs, like I like to say.

And he came back with a very robust mental health, came back very much himself.

Like chipper, strong willed, like very friendly, very kind, very like jokey and comical.

Very much like a Jovial guy.

And I realized that not everybody returns like that.

And so I wanted to be able to support the people who needed some more support to really get back to themselves.

And that's what made me want to become a therapist.

And yeah, because that's the work, I think, is the thing that is.

So I know as somebody who personally is.

I'm a work person first, I'm a doer, I'm a, you know, performing.

I'm helping somebody.

That's how I express my.

My values to others, is by doing the work to help them do their thing.

And it's something that's so specific, is like you also had to do so much work to prepare to help others.

When you're going through that process of getting educated, you know, that whole process had to be just fascinating when you're coming in from that, like, you know, that's, you know, that exciting big.

Oh, these are big things.

These are big things.

And then you find yourself, you know, basically, you know, doing service for others.

What part of that process of learning all that still stands out to you today?

There was like that light bulb moment of, oh, it's not the big things, it's the little things.

It's a great question, to be honest with you.

For me, it was throughout my grad program I was learning about the big things.

So like systemic racism, the economic system, the criminal legal system, just overall.

And it got to a point where I was like even furthering my studies.

And you'll see some of the other influences was like studying about the Black Panther Party, studying Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Studying social movements.

And it got to this point where I realized, oh, like, I have to pick one of these.

Like, I can't do all of this stuff.

That's not a.

That's not possible.

So I have to figure out what is my thing and do that to the best of my ability.

And that was the.

That was the light bulb moment.

Is there so much.

What is my part and how can I best do my part?

Yeah, well, I think that's also a very like that.

That moment, I think is so central to, like, if you take it and make it more abstract, it's so central to that journey to being.

I mean, the way I say it is being a real ass adult.

You know, being a full adult is realizing that thing that you can't do.

Everything that you have to be, you kind of have to have a focus.

You have to have something that you care about.

And I think that's one of those, like, Important moments that that's how I look back at things now is like, what are those inflection points where I started to realize that, oh, I care about this, that this matters to me, versus just being a fleeting interest.

Absolutely.

One of the quotes that came to mind while you were talking is a Malcolm X quote.

And he says, if you don't stand for something, you fall for anything.

Yeah.

And there was a time where I was like, I don't know if therapy is really the thing for me.

And what I realized and what caused a career shift for me was there were a lot of barriers working in the criminal legal system as a black man.

Yeah.

And so I have found a lot more ease in working in private practice.

And I also know for a fact that the reason why I was able to stay working within the criminal legal system for so long was because I was writing and performing hip hop and spoken word.

If it was not for that, I would not have been able to cope with the reality of going behind the wall and leaving a lot of my people there and then going back to community, going back to my bed, being able to go out and just live freely.

Yeah.

I think that, you know, that dissonance.

Right.

Is if you're a conscientious person in general.

And I'm going to speak about the general first, is I think things have to affect you in some form or the, you know, the knowledge of it, you have to.

You have to reflect on.

You have to be honest about the way that it's.

That reality is.

But as a person who's part of that community, as part of the black community, as part of seeing, hey, this is my community that is being disproportionately affected by all the decisions and choices that were made that affected that.

That conscious choice to know that this is going to affect me and to be able to then work on the recovery.

Right.

Taking care of yourself because you can't help somebody else unless you are okay or you're taking care of yourself too well.

And that was the.

Truthfully, me performing, my writing, my hip hop, that was what kept me solid in doing that work.

And I now go by Lamar the therapist, because at the time, I couldn't.

I would not be able to be a radical hip hop artist and work within the criminal legal system.

It just.

It would not work.

It would not work because of the things that I'm saying in my songs, and not necessarily that they're extreme or inappropriate, but that they would be received as such.

Perception.

Exactly.

That it is and misperception and.

And the stigma, not only that black people get, but also the stigma that mental health counselors got at one point, which has eased up because it's become this buzzword.

And most, first and foremost, stick with that hip hop artist get when they're actually conscious hip hop artists, when they're actually holding truth to power and recognizing that the decisions that other people make for the majority of us do not work for the majority of us.

Right.

One, I think this is.

It's a good pivot point to talking about, you know, this as a performance.

But I wanted to focus on the first two things that you mentioned.

You know, doing, you know, performing hip hop, doing, you know, know, in the style of rap, doing these kind of things, and spoken word and other styles of performance that are, you know, very specifically tied to.

Tied to the black community.

What about those, you know, what about that is appealing to you?

Because, I mean, for me, as an enjoyer of these kind of things, it's.

There's.

There's a dynamism to it.

Right.

It can be.

It can be big and performative, but it can also be conscientious.

It can be weird.

It can be all these different things.

And people boil it down to one thing, which I think that's the.

I think that's what I'm most intrigued about about your show is that I'm sure it is.

It's not just one version of this kind of performance.

Absolutely.

It is an extremely versatile show.

I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from other hip hop artists.

One artist who I want to shout out, Ethan Saves.

He actually has told me multiple times that it's helped to shift his sound and help him to be more conscientious with his work.

And truthfully, I can hear the difference.

Like, I can hear just the.

There's a lot more strength in it, and there's a lot more.

There's a lot more of pushing the narrative forward in it.

And so I want to show him some love and please stream his music.

Check him out as well.

And for me, I know the show in and of itself, there's some bravado songs.

There are the more, like, introspective songs.

There's also songs like, one of my favorite songs is Disparity, and it's essentially the sad song.

It's the sad song.

And what has always drawn me to hip hop was one, as a kid, just being able to kind of connect with certain parts of the community, certain parts of the culture, when, whether it be the fashion, the dancing the actual sound of it.

And then as an adult, or even as a young adult or a younger adult, it was utilizing it as a part of, like, the cultural history, like actually utilizing it in the tradition of the oral tradition, in the African oral tradition, the black oral tradition.

And for me, I understand that spoken word comes from the black arts movement and that the black arts movement was the cultural arm of the black power movement.

And so my understanding is that hip hop is a child of that.

Of both of those movements, the black power movement as well as the black arts movement.

And that is why I choose to focus at this time, my work on more socially conscious aspects.

Yeah, well, and I think it's also so tied to, you know, the oral history tradition that ties all the way back to pre.

You know, pre chattel slavery, like back to West Africa.

Right.

You know, oral tradition is so tied to.

To how stories have been told forever, and that those traditions affect all of that.

It's inevitable that it's part of that.

Part of that journey and that understanding of the entire history.

When you're thinking, when you're making that choice to do conscious.

To do conscious art versus, hey, I'm just going on performing, that's completely separate from.

From the way I'm, you know, the way I do my job, right.

The way I'm a professional at.

Lots of people want to fully separate, right?

You want the thing you do outside of your day job to be completely different for a complete separation.

When you're making that choice to do conscious performing, was there an inspiration?

Like, was there an artist that, you know, grabbed you that really does conscious performing?

That's like, oh, this is something grab me.

I want to try this.

That is a good question for me.

It's such an interesting.

It's an interesting kind of combination of inspirations for me because I would say, like, Lauryn Hill is one of my favorite artists.

I also love Kanye west, even though.

Or ye.

Even though I'm not a fan of his.

His most recent political kind of understandings,.

He's gone on a very, very interesting and specific journey.

And.

And.

And it's also very much been tied to his mental health and his.

His.

His.

Not only his car accident, but also the bipolar disorder.

And so there's a few different things there.

And also I would include other influences as, like Tupac, Mos Def, Public Enemy, Nina Simone, but I would also include, like, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X as influences.

So I would also include Angela Davis and Kwame Ture as influences, because there's a Strength and power to the spoken word, even when it's not in a rhythmic or musical format.

And so when it comes to the content, I would lean more on, like, my social justice warriors.

And when it comes to the music, I would lean more on my creative and my artistic side.

Yeah, and I'm.

I'm glad you use the term.

Right.

I'm glad you use the term social justice works.

It's been so demonized and used as this reductive, pejorative statement to, you know, belittle people that care about.

That care about others, that care about others without it impacting them directly.

And it's in so many ways, so many of these.

So many of these things that are demonized or brought from the black community.

The same way that, like, stay woke has become this, like, a pejorative, like you said.

And it was something to say.

Stay aware, Stay on your toes, Keep your head on a swivel.

Pay attention.

At the end of the day, just pay attention.

It's also so funny that it's not that long ago when it was exclusively.

It was not a term generally used.

Yes, yes.

And it was very much exclusively a term in the book black community.

And it's kind.

It's completely, like, separated now.

And it's so.

It's just fascinating to me how fast that happens and that the ties are completely severed.

But I think that's also so historical that, you know, culture in America is so defined by, you know, by the black community versus what have we created other than oppression in podcasts, essentially?

Like, and even those are, like, when you think of your disc jockeys and radio, like, that's also from the black community.

That's true.

Completely true.

Yeah.

So it's one of those things where we.

We contribute the vast majority of things to this country, and it is often overlooked.

And that also ties back to the stigma and the show.

The show focuses on those aspects of how it's impacted me personally and also within the criminal legal system.

But there are.

I mean, I think it's clear and obvious that there are plenty of ways that it extrapolates out from there and how those experiences are.

Are not just represented in music, but also the Internet.

I think that's the main reason why it's.

Our language gets kind of filtered out so quickly and we hop onto the next thing because it's widely available.

And I know for a fact in hip hop's heyday, they never thought that McDonald's was gonna be doing commercials using hip hop, or Target would be doing commercials using Hip hop.

And it is everywhere now.

It's everywhere now.

And that's like, it's not even that long ago where that would never have happened.

Not at all.

Hip hop is for folks who don't know hip hop is around.

If you're around like your 50s, like mid-50s, early-50s, you're around the same age as hip hop.

Yeah.

So hip hop is still like young in a lot of people's eyes, especially as a musical genre.

And the reason why I say that too is to accent what you're saying of it is still very new as an art form.

Like it's still a very young art.

Form by itself because you can hear interviews with people who were there when it happened.

Yes.

Still alive.

And it's so, it's so pervasive in culture now that you can actually hear the stories of that.

And it's amazing to hear that too.

And how specific and how choice, how, how much of a choice it was to perform this way and how it was tied to also history and everything else.

So I'm going to pivot over to talk about the one person show.

I love the concept of these.

I've been to a number of them.

Each one is special, each one is different.

When you were going through the process of deciding which parts of your performing would go into this, when you were practicing a longer show, a 45 minute show, how did that process go when you were dialing it in and you were thinking, all right, I'm going to do this kind this performance here and this here and I'm going to grab the audience in this way or that.

How did you find that process as coming with a longer performance?

Great question.

Again, so to.

I want to start with the inspiration for the one man show.

Oh please.

To come back to the Black Panther Party.

One of the founders is Huey P. Newton and there is a one man show called the Huey P. Newton Story, which I saw in grad school and I had learned about, taught myself about the Black Panther Party 10 point program, learned about the different founders and just the organization overall and in watching that format.

And it was purely monologue and it was one person.

His last name is Governor Smith.

I can't remember his first name, but he was in all about the Benjamins as well.

And he's shown a lot of range.

And he has since done a one man show based on Rodney King which appeared on Netflix as well.

That made me want to present my music and my spoken word in a format that I felt would give it the presence that it deserved.

Especially as a conscious hip hop artist, I've had to learn how to present my work at open mics.

I've had to learn how to present my work in bar settings and just night out settings.

And as a conscious hip hop artist, that's not necessarily what people are looking for when they're out trying to have a good time.

And I felt like this format would give it more of the honor that it deserves.

So presenting it as opposed to at a, like in a dive bar, actually presenting it on a stage and it feels in looks and sounds the way that I wanted it to.

And again, I think it's because of the actual content of the songs and when crafting it into the show.

I actually wrote all of the pieces individually and I always wanted to put them into a one man show.

And so that's how I fashioned it.

It's essentially the album, but it's not in album order.

And there are also monologues in order to transition between them.

For me, as a hip hop artist, skits are always a part of like classic hip hop albums.

Oh, you can't, you can't avoid them.

Exactly.

So some of the skits are just the monologues for it.

So it still is very much hip hop.

It just is.

Again, in like a theatrical arena.

Yeah.

And I think for me the, the part I enjoy a lot about them is the, the range.

Right.

The dynamism of a one person show.

And I, the part I end up focusing on is like, it's the ups and downs, it's the choices of when to.

Because you're, you're.

You have a lot of topics with weight.

Right.

These aren't, these aren't bouncy, light topics with everything.

Right.

Consciousness forces you to reckon with all of these serious topics, but if you're in that the entire time, it's hard to keep an audience lively and engaged.

How did you find that balance in keeping the topics with the weight that they deserve, but then also keeping the show dynamic.

There's an art form that my director, Ruben Tapp, I want to make so shout out for him as well, that he presented to me, which I didn't know about, but I also would say I was influenced by just based on the art form.

It's called theater of the oppressed.

And essentially it is a format where you utilize audience participation.

So the show actually opens up with some audience participation.

And that's something I've incorporated into my performances just in general.

And it's also something that's very hip hop and very with the oral tradition, with call and response.

You think church, you think performances, concerts, all of that.

And so that does help to kind of pull the audience in.

And then it's just the flow of the show, Honestly, it's just the flow of the show.

Like, there's a.

There are some ups, there are some downs, There are some, like, moments where it kind of just like there's some stillness, there's some quiet, and it always comes back to empowerment because I don't want anyone to walk away feeling like, oh, there's.

Like I said at the beginning, there is so much.

What do we do?

We can't do anything.

No, there is so much.

What can we do?

We can each individually do our thing.

Whatever your thing is, you do your thing.

This is my thing.

Whatever your thing is, you do your thing and we will all be better for it.

Share your gifts with us, man.

I think that's a damn good way to close out.

So let's get the plugs out once again for the show.

So the shows are September 17th at 7, the 19th at 6.

Tickets are [email protected] the shows are over at the Muck.

So, Lamar, any place you want people to follow you.

Otherwise.

Yeah, so you can find me as Lamar the therapist on Instagram.

You can also find me as Lamar the the on any streaming platform that you're listening to.

I currently have a single out called Capital, which is about the economic system.

So you can definitely check that out on all streaming platforms.

And I have two features with another good brother and another hip hop artist in Rochester, King Doogee.

One is called as above, so below and the other one is called the Tower.

And his name is King Doogee.

D U G I.

And he also just recently won Good Life Collectives.

They did a contest for a song.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So he was the winner for that.

So I want to shout him out to and say congratulations.

Very cool.

Well, thank you so much for coming over to the studio.

Make sure you go check out Lamar shows and get out to a whole bunch of other shows at the Fringe.

Also check out other shows on the lunch at our podcast network.

Want people to check out Rob Bell's show Plants and Beats, talking to his friends and other people about their journey through the lens of plants and making lo fi beats and hanging out and having a good time.

Killer stuff there.

And definitely want people to check out Representation Cinema by Jackie McGriff and the Our voices project.

Just did a whole series that recorded in August, amazing episodes, talking about some fantastic movies.

Definitely check that out and we'll see you out on the fringe.

Piece of progress.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchadore Podcast Network.

Hey, good stuff.