As children, brothers Jason and Joshua Alexander witnessed the fatal shooting of their abusive father, Mad Dog (Forest Whitaker), one night when he came home drunk and attacked their mother.

Jason (Allen Payne) becomes a responsible young man who works as an assistant manager and sales clerk in a Houston electronic shop and lives with his hard-working mom, Gloria (Suzzanne Douglas).

At first, Lyric rejects Jason's attempts to get closer to her due to her cynicism of men, but his persistence, sincerity, kindness, and humor eventually win her over.

Jason races there and finds Joshua holding Lyric at gunpoint, demanding Alonzo's whereabouts as well as venting his jealousy towards her for taking away his older brother.

The site's consensus reads: "Jason's Lyric is a sexually charged film whose violent streak weakens or, depending on your perspective, supports the melodrama.

"[1] Roger Ebert gave the movie praise for its cast's performances, director Doug McHenry's "lyrical touches" to the poetic aesthetics of Bobby Smith, Jr.'s script and its willingness to tackle dramatic themes that New Jack City and Sugar Hill also explored, concluding that, "It's not some little plot-bound genre formula.

"[2] Deborah Young from Variety praised the performances of Whitaker, Payne and Woodbine, and the visual settings created by McHenry and cinematographer Francis Kenny but felt the film's script "stumbles into a lame love story and ends in a conventional shootout and bloodbath.

"[3] Peter Rainer of the Los Angeles Times called the film "a terribly earnest melodrama with king-size ambitions", commending the filmmakers for their overall attempt at artistic cinema but found it "overextended and unbelievable both as love story and as urban tragedy.

"[4] In response to his review, filmmaker Jamaa Fanaka gave high praise to the film's two main leads, its supporting cast, and the direction of McHenry.

"[5] Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum gave it a C, writing that she found the brotherly storyline between Jason and Joshua more compelling than the main romantic plot, saying that the latter was "so dense with big themes strung together that character development suffers.

"[6] In a review for The New York Times, Caryn James criticized the filmmaking for being overly stylized with its poetic aspirations and making the plot twist "unintentionally confusing rather than deliberately holding back information" with its editing.