A Wilmington hip-hop pioneer transitions from promoter to comedy performer

A little over a year ago, Wilmington comic and producer Louis Maynor, who's better known by the name Louis Tee, stepped in front of a microphone to do comedy for the first time.

Maynor, a 1995 Laney High School graduate who was raised off Gordon Road in northern New Hanover County, grew up on the comedy of the late Bernie Mac and the HBO show "Def Comedy Jam."

When he stepped on stage during an open mic at Castle Street spot The Barzarre in June of 2022, however, Maynor was mainly known as a producer, a hip-hop impresario who'd been staging shows and concerts around Wilmington since the late 1990s.

He'd long been known as one of the only hip-hop producers in town, but lately Maynor had been wanting to do something different, and comedy had always been something he'd wanted to try.

"The first time I did it, it was my intention to do like a one and done," Maynor said recently over sushi at YoSake in downtown Wilmington. "Check it off my bucket list."

Yet what was intended as a one-off didn't quite work out that way.

"I would just kind of write some stuff down," he said. "And I just kept trying material and then working on the material that I had."

A year after he started doing comedy, Maynor tied for third in the Port City's Top Comic competition at the Dead Crow Comedy Room last June, and these days he can be found performing at shows, hosting shows or running what he calls "the gauntlet" of local open mics multiple days per week.

"I just wanted to make it to the finals," he said of Port City's Top Comic. "So I was happy, but to actually place my first year was outstanding."

The success also helped quell what he calls "a little bit of impostor syndrome," something artists of all stripes deal with.

Maynor calls himself an observational comic, and he's got a style that's laid-back, self-effacing and understated as he takes on such topics as pop culture, race, and one of his favorite subjects, hip-hop.

During a recent set at the After Brunch show he hosts twice a month at the Wilmington Distillery on Dock Street, Maynor, wearing black-frame Dolce & Gabbana glasses and ball cap with a bright yellow Tweety Bird on it, joked that "I love hip-hop almost as much as I hate everyone in it."

Wryly noting how inflation has even come to the world of rap, he compared the humble subject of LL Cool J's 1993 song "Back Seat of My Jeep" to Ace Hood's 2013 hit "Bugatti," about a high-end vehicle that not even a doctor could afford.

Maynor then worried about the elevation of Juneteenth to holiday status, he said, "Because I saw what America did to Cinco De Mayo."

Even as he's largely transitioned into performing, however, Maynor's still got producing in his blood. He started the After Brunch Show at the Distillery in June after doing a couple of Sunday variety shows called Live NC Color, with music, comedy and some spoken word, at Dead Crow.

The idea to do a regular Sunday afternoon show, "Weirdly enough, was inspired by a drag brunch," he said. "I went, I had drinks, got some food, and then I was home. It gave me the feeling of going out on a Friday or Saturday night when I was younger," except he was home before dark.

As he's gotten to know the other local comics on the Wilmington scene, "I feel like there's a lot of people doing great comedy," Maynor said. "I wish there was more diversity. That was one of my inspirations getting into it. Just kind of almost doing the same thing with comedy as I did with music."

He takes pains to book female comics and comics of color at the shows he produces, similar to how, back in the day, he was one of the first promoters to get hip-hop into Wilmington clubs in the late 1990s.

Back then, Maynor was setting up MC battles at places like the old Oasis nightclub on Kerr Avenue or the Ramada Inn lounge on Market Street.

"I booked the first hip-hop show at the Soapbox, and the last hip-hop show at the Soapbox," he said, referencing the late, lamented downtown venue that closed in 2013. "I feel like I kind of built that cachet around town."

Maynor still keeps a hand in the hip-hop world and recently hosted a three-day, multi-venue event called Majapalooza. "I'm fine kind of mixing the two worlds" of hip-hop and comedy, he said.

For 2024, he said, "My goal is to do the Raleigh-Durham area and do more shows out of town."

And he'll continue to make the transition from behind the scenes into the spotlight.

"I was definitely more behind the scenes" when he produced hip-hop shows, Maynor said. "It's definitely been a learning experience with certain things, especially being in front of the mic."

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Wilmington hip-hop pioneer Louis Tee now doing comedy