Lemon is a star of hip-hop performance poetry. Like most of his colleagues on the spoken-word stage, he came up through the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and honed his craft in the poetry slam scene. He was a member of the hip-hop theater ensemble Universes when they premiered their groundbreaking work Slanguage at UMass in 2001. He won a Tony award for his performance in Def Poetry Jam on Broadway and has appeared regularly on HBO's series of the same name.
Now he's added his last name, Andersen, to his billing and developed a formal one-man show, County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle. Developed at New York's American Place Theater, it chronicles his boyhood in Brooklyn as a teenage crack dealer, his time in prison, and his redemption through hip-hop. The show is coming to Hartford on Monday, titled only The Beautiful Struggle. (I guess New Englanders aren't expected to know that Brooklyn is in Kings County, N.Y.)
You can check out some of Lemon's rhymes at www.lemonshood.com. Here's a sample:
This is to the generation born without a choice,
born more broker than broke, more ghetto than ghetto.
This one's to let the world hear your voice
'cause there's too many nowadays claiming hardship
when they grew up in the hood with a family full of love
and only the real strugglers know that
just 'cause you're from the projects don't make you a thug.
There's a difference between being ghetto and being poor.
There's a difference between financial problems and being dead broke and nothing to live for.
The ghetto can take a bite out of a full-course meal and throw the rest away.
The poor eat white rice with eggs and ketchup and consider that gourmet.
The Beautiful Struggle, written and performed by Lemon Andersen. Dec. 1, 7 p.m., the Bushnell's Autorino Great Hall, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford, Conn., (860) 987-5900, www.bushnell.org.
