“Born and raised in a suburb of Memphis; the story of Lawrence Matthews is the journey of an artist trying to move forward toward a healthy and free self, all while reckoning with the extreme environmental stimulus of southern poverty and violence. Though often imagined as opposing forces, the horror and beauty of the south often live in the same space. Matthews navigates this in-between space as an extension of the southern gothic voices with whom he is aligned. He emerges as somewhat of a Morrisonian beloved ghost, a child who needed more. Now, fully grown as a manifestation of love and bitterness intertwined.

With a BFA from The University of Memphis and a decade long career working with various arts nonprofits, his work in nearly every area of the arts is an amalgamation of his whole life. As a young artist he’d create with the rap, soul and alternative rock references he’d come in contact with. Visually inspired by the regionalistic mythology of Paul Thomas Anderson and early Spike Lee; Matthews' own visuals weave African spirituality with the Christian mythology that permeates the region, highlighting the deep relationship between the often maligned spiritual connections Black people have explored for generations. Introduced to new sounds by way of underground mixtapes and 2000s video countdowns, these sonics blended with the eccentricities of acts like Outkast and grittier more reality-driven music from the south creating a diverse palate that Matthews pulls from when crafting the imagery that populates his own art.

The music made in his youth was a time capsule, created to be digested by certain people in a certain time period in connection with things like it. A response to adolescent isolation and otherness. Musically, a homage to high school and collegiate inspirations. As years passed and success manifested, he became “this thing", a commodified version of an aspect of who he was. Stripped, gutted, and primed for sale, core pieces of him were left out because they were inconvenient. What happened next was a three year period of gaining and losing everything he’d ever wanted. Discarded, he turned inward and to time. He ventured into the unexplored corners of himself, places and stories forgotten or suppressed behind traumatic environments and a survivalist mentality. Those discoveries clashed with the reality others projected onto him. So he quit…

In Fall 2022 at the Overton Park Shell, a performance booked a year before in the height of “getting everything he ever wanted”; rather than cancel the show he used the stage as an unveiling. The death of Don Lifted and the introduction to a transformed artist charting new territory. He debuted brash and brazen new material and, though he typically appears as a lone performer, he was joined onstage with somewhat of a musical posse, an allusion to a reborn artist who is intentional about aligning himself with others. That intention is a thread in his new musical journey, as he aligns his stories with the stories of those who came before him and walks alongside their traditions.

The music focuses on overlaps of those experiences with twisted confessions and deep longings anchored by sample layered production and masked by clever wordplay and storytelling in a musical landscape that finds Matthews moving through bravado, a surprisingly quiet tenderness, seething anger, and a myriad of other emotional displays with a thread of melancholy and intensity…

But there’s also joy. Joy in the form of an openness that allows a full range of expression with little regard for what’s typically considered beauty, making way for a different type of beauty that embodies the spirit of the “bluff city", a city that Matthews treats as a muse. It’s a place of upbringing but also a center for ideas and a culture that he embodies as a character containing many contradictions as part of an alluring story. An alchemist is what we are witnessing in the art of Lawrence Matthews. Navigation of the self, his place in the musical landscape of his hometown, his contributions to the world, and the preservation of his voice along with Black voices who have made the art possible. Presenting a collage of influences and an amalgamation of bold spectacle and quiet reflection. It’s a story that Matthews has a command of with other southern voices and stories woven into the seams. And with that, Matthews leans into a more far-reaching version of himself that encapsulates all possibility. Infinitely abundant and expansive in every direction.”