On a Saturday afternoon, we catch up with Thomas as he sits with a mango-banana smoothie at Café Brazil in Deep Ellum, just minutes away from where he lives. Days after our conversation, he's hanging up posters in the neighborhood, which remains one of his favorite places to perform.
“Deep Ellum reminds me so much of New Orleans,” Thomas says. “If you’ve been to New Orleans, you’ve been to Bourbon Street before, and Deep Ellum reminds me of Bourbon Street.”
Thomas grew up in New Orleans, as his reverence for the iconic Bourbon Street neighborhood would suggest. As a child, his family insisted he join the church choir, and he sang as a male soprano until the day his voice changed. As his voice deepened, Thomas learned to play around with song structure and loved seeing what he could do vocally. He also developed a passion for rapping and used it as a way to express his emotions growing up.
Thomas moved to Dallas in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. He looked at his family’s relocation to Dallas as a chance to start over.
“Even when I was in New Orleans, it wasn’t like things were going well,” Thomas says. “It was a tragedy, but moving to Dallas was a blessing.”
On Sade Flow, which arrives Sept. 19, Thomas largely takes inspiration from singer Sade. He grew up listening to Sade, who was one of his mother’s favorite artists, as they would clean the house.
“If something was wrong, my mom would listen to ‘Pearls,’ by Sade,” Thomas says. “That’s how I would know if something was wrong, and to leave her alone, because ‘Pearls’ is such a deep song.”
After coming out of a relationship that lasted over six years, Thomas wanted to channel Sade’s mellow, downtempo flow for his upcoming project, on which he collaborated with Denton-based producer Loop 288.
On a particular album cut called “Balance,” Thomas seeks to stay “balanced,” after coming out of a funk. He’s worked hard to get to this point, and now he just wants to maintain his composure, as he delivers funky, rap-singing vocals over a piano-and-percussion-driven beat.
In another track, titled "Jolene," which samples the famous Dolly Parton song, Lamar gives the country classic a hip-hop spin, singing from the perspective of a man who’s witnessing someone trying to take his girlfriend.
“I knew that classic guitar riff from [Parton’s] ‘Jolene,’” Loop says, “And I just decided I wanted to flip it, and Lamar made it work.”
Another standout is “Time and Peace,” on which Thomas explores the idea of getting back with his ex. “Give me time, give me peace, and I’ll be everything you need,” he raps. “Give me love, and I’ll be everything you need, and above.”
“The type of rap music that people are pushing is either mainstream rap or gangsta rap. There are so many different cultures here, and you can see it in the way people move around." – Lamar Adot Thomas
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These tracks line up in that order on the album, detailing the recovery process of Thomas’ heartbreak.
Elsewhere on the album is a song called “Thomas and Holliday,” which he says was the most challenging to write. On the track, he examines the relationships he has with his father and stepfather. He conceptualized it following some sessions in therapy.
“Thomas is my biological last name, and Holliday is my stepfather’s last name,” Thomas says. “It was me actually recognizing my own traumas that my dad and my biological dad and stepdad had placed upon me, and me not even realizing it. I used to fight for both of their love, and I wanted them both to feel like I’m the greatest son ever. I think I cried a little bit recording it.”
Over the course of the summer, Thomas has performed several shows at venues in Fort Worth and Deep Ellum. While Fort Worth’s music scene sizzled this summer with festivals Centro Popular and 817 Day, Thomas insists that Dallas is still the heart of music in North Texas.
With his 10th album just weeks away, Thomas is still celebrating each new era like it's his debut, and he will ring in the Sade Flow chapter with a special performance at South Side Music Hall on Oct. 28.
With the various stylings and flows Thomas channels, from chill downtempo hip-hop to funkadelic soul, he hopes that Dallas will continue to embrace all the nuances and intricacies of hip-hop and rap.
“The type of rap music that people are pushing is either mainstream rap or gangsta rap,” says Thomas. “There are so many different cultures here, and you can see it in the way people move around. I’d say it’s time to accept more styles of hip-hop and push them into the mainstream.”
