For generations, Detroit rappers’ plain-spoken tales of getting money at all costs were sustained by a local musical ecosystem in the Midwest and a tight bond with other regional street rap scenes in Atlanta and on the West Coast. Then, in the 2020s, an entire wave of rappers from the city bled into mainstream hip-hop culture without having to downplay their Detroitness or trend-hop—in fact, they became the trend. 42 Dugg stole the spotlight on arguably the Lil Baby song. Peezy’s “2 Million Up,” was a real hit. In 2023, Veeze dropped one of the best rap albums of the last five years. Every now and then in New York, where I’m at, I’m not surprised to turn on the radio and catch interviews with Babyface Ray, Icewear Vezzo, or Skilla Baby on The Breakfast Club. When I was growing up, if you didn’t seek out Blade Icewood and Doughboyz Cashout yourself, you’d never hear the Detroit spitters from that scene. Instead, it was the characters who could pop on MTV (Eminem and Big Sean) or the rap nerd darlings (Danny Brown, Slum Village). Now, there are songs all over the country and the world that sound like they’re straight outta’ Detroit’s street rap circuit.
New Detroit, the title of Lelo’s debut album, isn’t just a phrase that looks good on a press release—like the “New Dallas” movement currently being pushed by every rapper in North Texas who ever owned a Jeezy CD. It’s an idea he’s wrestling with on the project: the pressure on him to take advantage of all the eyes on Detroit while staying true to himself and putting on for his city, especially as the sound is removed from its context. “Where the fuck all the real go?” he asks on “Call It,” over a seedy Topside groove (with help from Shogun and Cdub) that feels like you’re on a stakeout in a blaxploitation caper.
He goes about that mission by personalizing his coming-of-age stories with vivid details that make his Detroit feel lived-in and textured. It’s a portrait of his city that is both loving and hard on it, one rooted in experiences that could only happen there. He’s at a boozy house party hitting on girls on “Paris,” which is grounded through the bouncy ghettotech beat. On “Survivors Guilt,” backdropped by Shogun’s instrumental that sounds like one of those melodramatic anime piano themes, he expands on the emotional complexities that come from making it out of a place where that possibility isn’t a given. As he flexes his ice and deep pockets on “Forever in a Day” and “Good for Your Health,” rumbling car engines, barking dogs, and police sirens give the songs the tint of good and bad childhood memories, like finding a stack of home videos in the attic.
Coming from a city widely known for its grind culture—from the factory workers to the dope boys to the rappers—the most Detroit thing about Lelo might be that he raps like he will spontaneously combust if he doesn’t get it out of the mud. “You ain’t never seen your people starve, that’s the type shit make you more than hungry,” he confesses on “Mourning Money,” the sentimental piano beat sharpening the emotion. In a dreamstate of sorts on the intro, he goes, “I see the lights, I must’ve made it out,” like he hustled so hard that it almost killed him. With his laid-back flow pitched somewhere between the blunted murmurs of Baby Smoove and the boss-rap cool of Babyface Ray, it’s a miracle that he still sounds so passionate and hungry, considering so many of the forgettable rappers of this style seem like they’re on permanent cruise control. But you really feel the bumps and bruises, the hard-earned lessons, the self-motivation. “I done made it out the hood, thank Jesus,” he raps on “Leisure,” which closes with a clip from Belly of DMX talking about how he’s willing to put his life on the line to reach his dreams. You really know you’re cooking when using a scene from Belly doesn’t feel cliché.
At points New Detroit can feel overthought, though, as if Lelo is trying too hard to differentiate his debut album from a mixtape. So there’s a love song that’s too vague (“F.A.L.”) and a few heavy-handed tracks that try too hard to be relatable. “Young, rich, and dumb,” he chants on “Hundred Thousand Ones” which sounds like a lesser version of the sort of optimistic time-to-grow-up anthems on Die Lit or Days B4 III. But at its best, New Detroit stands out not because it’s an album that can be molded to fit the life of any 20-something who has been through some shit, but because it’s his life in his city.
One of the album’s best songs is “Groundhog Day,” an intimate ode to a specific way of life. Fighting off the go-nowhere rhythms that can be easily slipped into (“Different day, same shit/Niggas in the same place, moaning about the same bitch”) and embracing the daily motivation to get after it that’s in their blood: “How the fuck I’m supposed to sleep, there’s a Bentley up the road.” He couldn’t come from anywhere else but Detroit.
