Living for the City

The city’s sound was shaped by places never built to last – until the music changed everything. In Episode 2 of Living for the City, Hanif Abdurraqib asks what happens to the spaces that shaped the music once the city around them begins to change. Waajeed, DJ and producer and one of Detroit's living encyclopedias, walks through what was lost when the lofts at The Griswold got converted into luxury apartments. DJ Minx reflects on the Music Institute as something close to a religion, and what it felt like when it was gone. Don Was goes back to being 16 at the Grande Ballroom, a place that offered what he calls a utopian vision of teenage freedom. And at Underground Resistance, still standing, the conversation turns to what it actually takes to preserve not just a building but the community that gave it meaning. Hanif argues that the innovations that allow people to gather are just as important as the innovations of the music itself. You need the sound. But you also need the basement, the warehouse, the bar on a bad block that somehow sold out on a Sunday. Detroit has always found those places. The question is what happens when those spaces no longer exist. CHAPTERS: 00:00 - The Griswold: What Was Lost When the Lofts Became Luxury 01:56 - Cheap Space and Creative Community: Why Affordability Builds Scenes 05:25 - The Music Institute: A Religion That Ended Without Warning 06:05 - St. Andrews, The Shelter, and the Art Versus Commerce Shift 10:00 - Underground Resistance: Community Project and Music Factory 12:28 - The Gold Dollar and Grande Ballroom: Freedom on a Bad Block 16:17 - Motor City Wine: How Detroit Keeps Building New Architecture New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@LivingfortheCityPod Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5KYTveuTY4nydCKG8yTxjJ?si=c184740e2d9f43b5 Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/living-for-the-city/id1895831267 Stay connected! 📸 Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/livingforthecitypod/ TAGS/KEYWORDS: Living for the City, Living for the City podcast, Hanif Abdurraqib, Detroit music history, Detroit venues, Detroit gentrification, Music Institute Detroit, The Griswold Detroit, St. Andrews Hall Detroit, The Shelter Detroit, Grande Ballroom Detroit, Gold Dollar Detroit, Underground Resistance Detroit, Motor City Wine Detroit, Cobo Arena, Waajeed, DJ Minx, Don Was, Detroit techno, Detroit DJ culture, Detroit creative community, Detroit music venues, Detroit dance music, Black dance culture, Detroit rock, MC5, The Stooges, Detroit Cobras, house music Detroit, techno history, creative displacement, affordability and art, Detroit neighborhoods, Detroit nightlife, Side Stage Network, Live Nation podcast, music podcast, Detroit culture, music history podcast, 2025 podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Detroit’s music didn’t come from nowhere. It came from working people who carried the rhythm of the city with them long after the shift ended. In the debut episode of Living for the City, host Hanif Abdurraqib traces the thread between labor and art that runs through everything Detroit has ever made. Berry Gordy IV reflects on his father modeling Motown on the assembly line and what it meant to build stars the same way Detroit built cars. Kevin Saunderson breaks down the early days of proving parents wrong in a blue-collar town that didn't yet believe in them. Don Was recalls playing bar gigs for $10 a night before becoming one of the most important producers in the world. And Bob Seger's longtime tour manager Bill Blackwell explains what Detroit pride actually looks like when autoworkers show up at a golf tournament holding Live Bullet albums. Detroit, Hanif argues, is a stamp of authenticity. You had to go through something to get here. And what came out the other side became techno, rock, Motown, hip hop. Something the whole world is still listening to. This one starts at the source. CHAPTERS: 00:00 - The Engine of the City: How Detroit Built Its Sound 04:18 - Techno Boulevard: Three Teenagers Who Invented a Genre0 8:20 - The Motown Blueprint: How Berry Gordy Built Stars Like Cars 11:00 - The Grind: Don Was, Bob Seger, and Earning Detroit's Respect 15:00 - Day Job Artists: Working the Plant and Making Records 19:04 - The Democratization of Genius: Dilla, Aretha, and Detroit's Spirit 22:05 - Next Time: The Buildings That Built Detroit's Music New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@LivingfortheCityPod Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5KYTveuTY4nydCKG8yTxjJ?si=c184740e2d9f43b5 Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/living-for-the-city/id1895831267 Stay connected! 📸 Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/livingforthecitypod/ TAGS/KEYWORDS: Living for the City, Living for the City podcast, Hanif Abdurraqib, Detroit music history, Detroit music documentary, techno history, Motown history, Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Berry Gordy, Don Was, Bob Seger, Bill Blackwell, J Dilla, DJ Minx, Detroit techno, Detroit labor, assembly line music, working class Detroit, Detroit hip hop, Detroit rock, Side Stage Network, Live Nation podcast, music podcast, Detroit culture, music history podcast, Detroit musicians, Belleville Three, techno origin story, Motown assembly line, Dennis Coffey, Detroit pride, music and work, artists and day jobs, Detroit creative community, 2025 podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before Detroit gave the world Motown, techno, and hip-hop, it gave the world something harder to name: a feeling that music made in basements and backrooms and borrowed spaces could become the soundtrack to an entire generation's life. That is the story Living for the City is here to tell, and nobody alive is better equipped to tell it than Hanif Abdurraqib. MacArthur Fellow. New York Times bestselling author. The most gifted writer working at the intersection of music, memory, and American identity today. Hanif brings his singular voice to a new video podcast series that goes inside the streets, venues, and neighborhoods where iconic sounds are born, talking with the artists, DJs, producers, and community architects who built these movements from the ground up. Season One is Detroit. Eight episodes. The full arc of how one city became the unlikely origin point for some of the most influential music ever made, told by the people who were actually there, and the writer who understands better than anyone what it meant. This is not a music history lesson. This is a front-row seat to the moments that mattered. Living for the City premieres May 13th, with new episodes dropping weekly. Subscribe now on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices