LAMÄR Weaves a Spell of Heart and Soul with Moonseeker Trilogy

Screeching tires cut through the sounds of onrushing traffic before we hear the sudden crash of crumpled steel and breaking glass. A few seconds of silence follow. Then LAMÄR’s husky whisper emerges amid the chirping of crickets: “In shadows cast by silver light/ A wonder roams through the night/ With dreams as vast as the starlit sea/ The moonseeker longs to be free…”

In this dramatic fashion, “The Moonseeker” opens LAMÄR’s trilogy of the same name, three albums tracing the artist’s life through autobiography, metaphor and mysticism. LAMÄR calls the Moonseeker trilogy’s ethereal, soulful music “third-person nonfiction,” but its emotive, mythic storytelling transcends the concept of self.

Moonseeker traces a trip through the cosmos that fosters a greater appreciation of life — LAMÄR’s, yours, someone you love, or possibly someone you’ve yet to love. So why does it open with a shuddering impact?

“I never experienced a car crash,” LAMÄR says. “It’s a kind of catalyst, [and] it felt like it had to happen.”

He’s referring not to a literal car wreck that he survived but a personal inflection point, the moment he pivoted from a career as a ballet dancer to a singer-songwriter — a gifted vocalist whose messages grow continually richer and deeper.

“The Moonseeker” is the kind of track an artist usually uses to kick off a record, much less a trio of connected albums, but LAMÄR is not a standard singer-songwriter. With a voice that seamlessly ascends from a fine-grained tenor to a vertiginous falsetto, he delivers lyrics both mystical and autobiographical, universal and personal.

LAMÄR brings his soulful dance-inflected alternative R&B to Petra’s, performing alongside Janelle Sy’mone on March 20. The show is the first stop on his Moonseeker: Seek the Moon tour, the second leg and continuation of his 2025 Moonseeker tour.

Born Aaron Lamar Atkins to a biracial family, LAMÄR grew up in low-income housing in Lancaster, South Carolina. Both his mother and sister were dancers, and LAMÄR fell in love with dancing and singing at 6 years old, devising and directing skits with his cousins.

‘[Dancing] pushed me forward first,” he says. “I never had the guts to let people know I really wanted to be a singer.”

LAMÄR attended the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities in Greenville, where he trained in conservatory-style dance. At the same time, LAMÄR had been posting his singing and nascent songwriting on MySpace. At age 17, he was scouted by an A&R man with Arista Records and signed to a development deal.

When the agent who signed LAMÄR was fired, LAMÄR was let go. He went back to what he knew, accepting a dance contract with Ballet Savannah.

“I went into my shell and put being a singer on the back burner,” he says.

When the ballet company subsequently went bankrupt, LAMÄR decamped to New York.

“Me being gay, being a dancer [and] coming from humble beginnings, I couldn’t go back to Lancaster,” LAMÄR says.

In New York, LAMÄR was offered a contract with Ballet Hispanico, where he danced as Aaron Atkins. Then he encountered the metaphoric car crash/catalyst he references in “The Moonseeker.”

“All of a sudden it was like this hard stop in my head,” LAMÄR remembers.

He decided to leave Ballet Hispanico and launched his own company, Ballet Inc., in 2012. He has served as the company’s artistic director since its inception. In 2017, the state of New York awarded Ballet Inc. The Multicultural Award of Excellence.

Around the time of the company’s launch, LAMÄR acknowledged that his love of music and his urge to sing had never really vacated his heart, but it took an evening out singing karaoke in a Hell’s Kitchen bar to spark the next phase of his career.

A Roc Nation A&R agent saw LAMÄR’s karaoke performance and approached him.

“It felt like this fire inside of me was rekindled,” LAMÄR says.

He realized his future would hold more than being a ballet dancer. This time, when contract talks came up, LAMÄR was more discerning. He signed a distribution deal with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, where he controls his music and his masters as an independent artist.

In addition, he also set up an LLC, Lamar Music, in 2021, which sends his music out through independent digital music distribution service DistroKid.

LAMÄR drops ‘You Are Loved’ in two pieces

By the end of 2019, LAMÄR was back in Charlotte, though his work with Ballet Inc. brings him back to NYC and other cities where the troupe may be touring. Living in Ballantyne, he started posting cover songs online to change people’s perceptions of him from a dancer to a singer. He saved enough money to go into the since-closed Studio Evolution in Charlotte to record his debut single as a singer-songwriter “Moonlight.”

“The track was inspired by a night out in New York where I had met this guy and we had an amazing night,” LAMÄR says. “Then he got in a cab and I never saw him again.”

With romantic, wistful lyrics that evoke the moment when your guard is down and your heart is open, the song recaptures that moment: “I remember your face in the moonlight/ As we said our goodbyes/ I went back to me/ But I still remember…”

When LAMÄR initially recorded the tune and posted it on TikTok, it was a lo-fi slow burner. He took it to Studio Evolution in 2022 just as the facility was beginning to shut down and started working with Eric Carter.

“We were just trying to get the song as close as possible to how [LAMÄR] envisioned it,” Carter says.

It soon became clear that the collaboration would be much more than a one-off project. When Carter suggested a tempo change, the song came together. LAMÄR pulled up a more rhythmic track and sang the lyrics to that beat. “Moonlight” became an irresistible electronic dance song. It all came together on the first take.

“I was learning how to be a producer and manage an artist.,” Carter offers. “I always wanted that experience, and I’m grateful it happened. [LAMÄR] taught me how to truly collaborate with an artist.”

Carter has continued to collaborate with LAMÄR, engineering all his subsequent recordings. Those include two 2023 singles, the ebullient self-affirmation “Evermore” and the bright and dancey “Brand New Day.”

“It’s very uplifting, like ‘Get up, get out there, get it,’” LAMÄR says of the latter track. “When you come from humble beginnings … and have nothing to come back to, it’s a mindset that’s stimulating to an artist.”

Both “Evermore” and “Brand New Day” appear on LAMÄR’s You Are Loved Aside (as in A-Side), a five-song EP that dropped in September 2023.

Already, LAMÄR was thinking beyond individual songs to song cycles, serial EPs and albums that develop and convey concepts. The theme behind You Are Loved is right in the title, LAMÄR insists.

“I wanted to convey the message that ‘You are loved,’” he says. “I felt like it was a message to myself. I’ve been through it, [and] these are the songs that helped me get through it.”

The concept of navigating love and relationships that fuels You Are Loved Aside is continued by LAMÄR’s follow-up six-song EP You Are Loved Bside, released in January 2024.

LAMÄR, who draws from an eclectic range of musical inspiration inspired by his mixed Nigerian and Scottish ancestry, says the B-Side collection differs from its forebear.

The A-Side EP is more dance-pop, even verging on adult contemporary in tracks like the limpid and lyrical “Love You Much.” In contrast, the B-Side EP is inspired by 1990s R&B artists like SWV and Escape.

“The A-Side is like me being happy in love and all of those things that come along with that feeling,” LAMÄR says. “The B-Side is when you get cheated on, when life feels like shit.”

A two-EP project examining the byways and crossed circuits of love might seem an ambitious enough undertaking for any artist, but LAMÄR was not finished with overarching concepts.

When he had previously crafted songs exploring themes of love, loss and self-reflection, LAMÄR began composing and planning a unique song and sound cycle that creates connections between the listener and the cosmos, a sonic experience both personal and otherworldly: The Moonseeker trilogy.

LAMÄR embraced the first LP of the cycle, the seven-song Moonseeker I, as an opportunity to display his versatility.

In addition to the experimental spoken-word-meets-soundscape title track, Moonseeker I makes space for tunes like “Seek the Moon,” where LAMÄR’s caressing enfolding vocal croons: “I hear the sands of time/ In the middle of the night/ No more shadows/ No more fears…”

The Moonseeker trilogy moves from wax to screen

In the run up to the trilogy, LAMÄR collaborated with musician-dancer-DJ Chris Washington on the 2024 single “You and I.” Washington recorded the single as DJ BLKARTS and currently creates as Vixxen.

“What really made me want to collaborate on something fun and pop-driven was watching LAMÄR take the stage and fully live in his truth,” Vixxen says. “There was something so magnetic and unapologetic about it. You could tell he wasn’t just performing, he was owning the moment.”

“You and I” appears on Moonseeker II, released in January 2025. The nine-track medial chapter of LAMÄR’s ethereal musical vision remains rooted in alt-R&B but pushes boundaries with its cosmic production and emotional storytelling.

Tracks like the skirling, mysterious “Pluto Love” suggest an otherworldly yet tactile collaboration between Prince and Smokey Robinson.

By early 2025, Saad Howard, who creates as Daas, had joined LAMÄR’s team as a creative consultant.

“I was excited to begin collaboration with LAMÄR … because he had an ambitious, cinematic vision for R&B that felt fresh,” Daas says. “He wasn’t interested in following trends; he wanted to experiment. He moves quickly because he’s so driven and that ambition creates momentum.”

In March 2025, the tropicalia-tinged, rhythmic “Pisces Groove” served as a foretaste of the 10-track Moonseeker III LP. The song grew from a groove LAMÄR heard in his head, and his vulnerable, surrealistic lyrics reflect his point of view as a Pisces man.

“Being more sensitive emotionally — it’s not the sort of adjective a lot of people use to describe a male,” he says. “In today’s age we’re starting to open up to what new adjective is okay for a cis man. Who cares that you’re gay? Who cares that you’re whatever? It’s the emotions that are connecting with other humans that are most important.”

In addition to “Pisces Groove,” Moonseeker III also includes one of LAMÄR’s more experimental interludes, the moody, mysterious and jazzy “Batman & Robin.” While the Moonseeker trilogy draws inspirations from the stars, it’s also relatable and universal, with tunes about breakups and feelings of abandonment.

The albums’ experimental transition pieces in particular invite the listener into LAMÄR’s thought processes.

“It’s like, this is in my head,” LAMÄR offers. “If you want to get to know me, you listen to the Moonseeker trilogy.”

With music that contains cinematic concepts and imagery like a car crash signaling a life change or a wanderer among the stars spread across the sky, it’s not surprising that

LAMÄR is developing a series of short films to tie in with Moonseeker I. Taking a cue from the horror film franchises like Scream and Halloween that LAMÄR loves, the project will be a trilogy, consisting of three short films that draw visual inspiration from avant-garde cinema.

Directed by LAMÄR’s friend Robert Grant, a model-turned-photographer/videographer baed in NYC, and produced by Charlotte’s Bobby Kerns Productions, the three films will interpret the entire Moonseeker I album. The first installment is scheduled to release in the summer.

“The short films are intended to give a deeper understanding [of Moonseeker],” LAMÄR maintains. “Although [they will] leave room for introspection.”

In the meantime, LAMÄR continues to perform live. Hot off of playing the main stages at Pride in the Park Charlotte, Famously Hot SC Pride in Columbia and Charlotte Pride in 2025, Lamar will take his Moonseeker: Seek the Moon tour to NYC’s Delancey on April 30.

“LAMÄR has such a sharp eye for stage design and presence,” Vixxen says. “The way he thinks about the full experience — not just the song but the visual and the energy.”

“He’s constantly learning how to refine his vision into something tangible that will grow his audience and continue to push R&B music forward,” adds Dass, who says LAMÄR is “totally deserving” of the recognition he’s begun to receive in the Charlotte music scene that he loves so much.

LAMÄR’s longtime engineer Carter says his collaborator’s superpower is vision and perseverance.

“He fully embodies himself as LAMÄR the artist,” Carter maintains. “He’s been doing shows, putting himself out there, and growing as a person and an artist.”

Read more: Gena Chambers Talks Jazz and Soul in Charlotte Before Lovers’ Night Out

As LAMÄR has expanded his artistic palette from dancer to moonseeking music-maker to captivating stage performer and now to outré filmmaker, he keeps his message to listeners and showgoers direct yet deep. He hopes people experiencing his cosmic but down-to-earth music feel love — but not just as a warm and fuzzy word.

“I want people to embrace the feeling of love,” LAMÄR insists. “Whether that takes you to a melancholy space, or [a] robust space of abundance and happiness.”

It’s not a surprising wish for a soulful, mystical R&B artist who finds a needed course correction in a metaphorical car crash, or a human connection among the moon and the stars.