Lemon Andersen
Lemon Andersen is an American poet and spoken-word artist who also acts, and the poetry is the main event. He wrote County of Kings, he is the subject of the documentary Lemon, and he is sometimes credited simply as Lemon.
His 2011 TEDYouth talk is the best short introduction to how he works. He performs 'Please don't take my Air Jordans', a poem by Reg E. Gaines, and then talks his way into his own riff on what Gaines, Etheridge Knight and other poets did to him as a young writer. The performance is the argument. He does not explain influence, he demonstrates it and lets you hear the seam.
The screen credits here are supporting and mostly urban-realist: Paul Guitierez in Inside Man, Uncle Tommy in The Soloist, Geronimo in The Son of No One, and a holographic speaker in the climate anthology series Extrapolations. Four credits is a small footprint, and it plainly represents one part of a working life rather than the whole of it.
Movies (3)
TV (1)
Where to start with Lemon Andersen
Watch Inside Man first, partly because it is the best film on this short list and partly because a hostage-heavy heist picture is exactly the right room for a performer whose instrument is his voice.
The Soloist gives him a smaller role in another story about street life observed from the outside, and The Son of No One is the bleaker Queens police drama, a harder watch and a better fit for his register.
Extrapolations is the outlier, a strange one-off as a holographic speaker in a near-future anthology. Honestly, though, the poetry is the reason to look him up, and none of these four films is a substitute for hearing him read.