Metro Times 03/22/23

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We received responses to editor Lee DeVito’s essay, “It’s been three long days of relitigating Meg White’s drumming.” See metrotimes.com for the backstory...

Meg’s “basic drumming style” allowed Jack’s guitar to really stand out. Which is what made the band. —Jonathan Robert

I was absolutely captivated by Meg’s drumming every show I saw. Beauty in simplicity. —Scott Fernandez, Facebook

Let’s not pretend she’s the drummer of The Shaggs. Her drumming made that band what is. The Black Keys and Local H needed like 4 people to remake their

sound live, whereas the White Stripes it was just Jack and Meg on stage, and I hate to say it but if we’re going to nitpick The White Stripes, Jack’s nasally goat voice is its biggest flaw. —Matthew Krist, Facebook

Thanks, MT and Lee DeVito. This is a nice bit of writing and nostalgia, and also now I have my gym soundtrack for tonight. — Linc DamageInc, Facebook

Outstanding essay. And the last line says it all. People forget about the actual meaning behind the art, and are so excited to have a hot take for those sweet sweet dopamine hits on social media. — Jeremy Whiting, Facebook

Sound off: letters@metrotimes.com.

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Michigan Democrats waste no time flexing new political muscle

FOR NEARLY FOUR decades, Republicans controlled the state Legislature and killed every progressive bill that was introduced.

Now Democrats have a majority in the state House and Senate, and they are wasting no time pressing forward with their new political power.

Since January, when Democrats

took control of both chambers for the first time in 38 years, lawmakers have introduced or passed bills intended to protect LGBTQ people, labor unions, and abortion rights, enact gun control measures, and abolish life sentences for juveniles.

Last Wednesday, Democrats in the state House voted to repeal a so-

called right-to-work law that weakened labor unions, expanded background checks for gun purchases, and expanded the state’s civil rights act to protect LGBTQ people.

On the same day, the state Senate voted to repeal a decades-old abortion ban that is still on the books.

Then on Thursday, the state Senate

passed a package of bills that would require safe firearms storage and background checks for gun purchases, as well as enable courts to temporarily seize guns from people deemed a danger to themselves or others.

Also on Thursday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed a bill expanding the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.

It was a big week of celebrations for activists.

Dylan Morris, a senior at Oxford High School, where four students were killed in a mass shooting in November 2021, said the gun safety bills will save lives.

“After the shooting at my high school, students and parents begged the politicians in Lansing to act, but they refused,” Morris, co-founded and executive director of the organization No Future Without Today, said in a statement Thursday. “Today is different. Today is historic. Our Senators worked hand-in-hand with students and advocates to pass these bills that will save countless lives.”

LGBTQ activists applauded the expansion of the civil rights act.

“This bill being signed into law is a beacon of hope and sends a powerful message of acceptance to LGBTQ people across the nation,” Troy Stevenson, director of state advocacy campaigns for The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth. “We applaud the elected leaders, advocates, and Governor Whitmer for making this a reality, and affirming the dignity and rights of LGBTQ Michiganders by codifying these protections into law.”

—Steve Neavling

WSU announces free tuition for families earning less than $70K

MICHIGAN FAMILIES

WITH annual incomes of $70,000 or less are now eligible for the “Wayne State Guarantee,” a new program that offers a tuition-free degree from Detroit’s Wayne State University with zero out-ofpocket expenses.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined WSU officials last week to announce the program, set to begin in fall 2023.

“Students in Michigan deserve the opportunity to receive quality, affordable higher education,” Whitmer said. “I’m proud to work with universities across the state to lower the cost of college for Michigan students and help them gain the skills to be prepared for the new and expanding businesses coming to the

state. Last year, almost half of first-year students at Wayne State University had zero out-of-pocket expenses, with this initiative, the university is offering that opportunity to even more students.”

The Wayne State Guarantee is available to incoming first-year undergraduates who are Michigan residents admitted for fall 2023 as a first-time undergraduate in a degree-program; come from households with an income of $70,000 or less and assets of $50,000 or less as confirmed on the 2023-24 FAFSA; or are eligible for the Pell grant in 202324; and must be enrolled full time (12 or more credit hours per semester).

To participate, WSU must receive 2023-24 FAFSA documents by April 1,

2023, and students must be admitted to WSU by April 1, 2023.

The Wayne State Guarantee is funded through a combination of federal, state, and other WSU scholarships and grants. The award is renewable for up to four years, with the option to apply for a fifth year if the student is on track to graduate in that year.

“Wayne State has a long history of being a university of access and opportunity, and now our commitment to making a college degree affordable comes in the form of a guarantee,” Wayne State University president Roy M. Wilson said in a statement. “We are excited to expand the opportunity for an affordable, world-class education to more Warriors.

We are grateful for Governor Whitmer’s leadership in establishing the Michigan Achievement Scholarship and paving the way for Michiganders to pursue tuition-free higher education.”

In 2022, Gov. Whitmer signed the bipartisan Michigan Achievement Scholarship program into law, which saves students up to $8,250 on their associate degree at a community college, up to $20,000 at a private college, or up to $27,500 at a public university. Previously, Whitmer announced her “Sixty by 30” goal to increase the number of working-age adults with a skill certificate or college degree from 50.5% today to 60% by 2030.

—Lee DeVito

Rashida Tlaib asks why U.S. bails out big banks but not the rest of us

FOLLOWING THE RECEN T collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib called for more regulation on the financial industry — and pointed out the hypocrisy when irresponsible banks can expect a helping hand from Uncle Sam, but everyday Americans can’t.

“I am troubled that when the rich and powerful manufacture a crisis they’re almost immediately saved by the federal government, but when we advocate for popular policy like student loan forgiveness and Medicare for All, we’re scolded about fiscal responsibility and told the cost is simply too high — including by some of the very venture capitalists and Silicon Valley executives now begging for a bailout,” Tlaib said in a statement last week.

“The American people have been asking for help with affordable housing, livable wages, and the cost of higher education — where’s their bailout?” she added. “We need to flip this script, or people will continue to lose faith that the federal government will put their interests ahead of corporate profits.”

The Detroit Democrat also said that the collapse of the banks “should be a wake-up call to Congress and the White House that financial institutions simply cannot be trusted to regulate themselves and manage risk appropriately.”

She added, “There is a clear lesson to be learned about the destructive and reckless behavior of venture capital and Silicon Valley firms and how deregulat-

ing financial institutions only encourages unchecked greed to run rampant at the expense of our residents.”

The failures at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were the largest in U.S. history since the 2008 financial crisis, prompting the federal government to announce an extraordinary emergency intervention aimed to mitigate the fallout so it doesn’t spread throughout the financial system by making all depositors whole.

However, unlike the 2008 crisis, President Joe Biden made clear that taxpayers would not foot the bill. Instead, the money used to reimburse the banks comes from an insurance fund paid into by the banks.

“This is an important point: no losses will be borne by the taxpayers,” Biden said. “Let me repeat that: No losses will be borne by the taxpayers.”

Tlaib urged Congress to pass new banking regulation legislation.

“If this bailout isn’t paired with serious reforms, what’s to prevent this all from happening again?” she said.

The point was echoed by a New York Times column by Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“No one should be mistaken about what unfolded over the past few days in the U.S. banking system: These recent bank failures are the direct result of leaders in Washington weakening the financial rules,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote.

In 2018, then-President Donald

Trump signed legislation that rolled back regulations enacted in the wake of the 2008 crisis.

Warren also pointed out the double standard when the U.S. government helps banks but not working-class Americans saddled with unprecedented levels of student loan debt.

“Regulators have said that banks, rather than taxpayers, will bear the cost of the federal backstop required to pro-

tect deposits. We’ll see if that’s true,” she said. “But it’s no wonder the American people are skeptical of a system that holds millions of struggling student loan borrowers in limbo but steps in overnight to ensure that billion-dollar crypto firms won’t lose a dime in deposits.”

President Biden has called for a student loan forgiveness program to grant up to $10,000 of federal student loan debt relief for qualifying borrowers and another $10,000 for Pell grant recipients. But that plan is on hold as the courts consider two cases related to the program.

The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates rapidly in an attempt to curb inflation, causing turbulence in the finance and technology sectors. However, critics like Warren say banks should have known to anticipate the possibility of interest rates rising.

“[Silicon Valley Bank] apparently failed to hedge against the obvious risk of rising interest rates,” she wrote. “This business model was great for S.V.B.’s short-term profits, which shot up by nearly 40 percent over the last three years — but now we know its cost.”

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont also homed in on the hypocrisy from the federal government.

“We cannot continue down the road of more socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else,” Sanders said in a statement. “Let us have the courage to stand up to Wall Street, repeal the disastrous 2018 bank deregulation law, break up too big to fail banks and address the needs of working families, not the risky bets of vulture capitalists.”

—Lee DeVito

Giant invasive snails found in luggage at DTW

CUSTOMS OFFICIALS FOUND six giant “highly invasive” snails with destructive potential in a traveler’s suitcase at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

The giant African snails, which were alive, are “a prohibitive organism” that have the potential to wreak havoc on the environment and cause diseases in humans. They have an affinity for devouring plants, produce, flowers, tree bark, and even the paint and stucco off houses.

The gastropods also carry parasites that can lead to meningitis in humans.

Nevertheless, the snails are a popular finger food in some countries, which appears to be the reason the passenger flew the snails to Detroit from Ghana, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Friday.

“Our CBP officers and agriculture specialists work diligently to target, detect, and intercept potential threats before they have a chance to do harm to U.S. interests,” CBP Port Director Robert Larkin said in a news release. “The discovery of this highly invasive pest truly benefits the health and well-being of the American people.”

It’s just the latest bizarre discovery made at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in the past year. In February, CBP announced it had found a young dolphin’s skull inside luggage. And a “dangerous” moth not seen in the U.S. since 1912 was discovered in a passenger’s bag at the airport in May 2022.

—Steve Neavling

SHUTTERSTOCK

Lapointe

was always wrong, as Jimmy Hoffa told me

It is good for Michigan’s Democratic leadership to abolish the “rightto-work” law in the Great Lakes State. The decade-old scheme was instituted by Republican legislators in a lameduck session in 2012 to damage unions in a state that once backed workers’ rights.

The debate brought back memories of my first conversation about “rightto-work.” It was with none other than Jimmy Hoffa, who stood next to me off camera at the studios of WTVS, Channel 56.

This was back when metro Detroit’s public television station was headquartered at Second and Bethune in the New Center and labor unions were much stronger than they are today. Truth be told, some union damage has been self-inflicted.

So, this was September of 1972. Hoffa, recently deposed as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was about to appear on Firing Line, with William F. Buckley, the conservative intellectual talk show host who passed through the Motor

By Joe Lapointe

City to record a couple shows. Hoffa was less than a year out of federal prison for a variety of felonies and he had less than three years to live.

I was a 21-year-old, wet-behind-theears, newlywed journalism student at Wayne State University, trying to report a feature for the student newspaper, The South End

Before the show, Buckley stood on the other side of the big room, talking with a producer. Hoffa nodded his head in Buckley’s direction and spoke to me in a confidential tone of voice.

“Don’t trust this guy,” Hoffa said of Buckley. “He’s a right-to-worker.”

In that my Dad was an automotive patternmaker and a Labor-Day-parade kind of guy, I vaguely recognized the term “right-to-work” and I sort of knew it wasn’t good for unions. So I nodded sagely and kept my mouth shut.

I probably should have remained silent moments later, when Hoffa changed the subject and I asked a question, a real rookie mistake. More on this to come.

First, though, a round of applause for the Michigan House of Representatives and Senate, who have passed the bill to abolish “right-to-work,” which allows freeloaders to enjoy union benefits and protection without paying union dues.

After differences are ironed out between chambers, the bill will go soon to Governor Gretchen Whitmer for a signature. The only way Republicans and right-wingers can destroy it is by amending the state constitution by ballot measure in 2024.

To do this, they will need more than 400,000 signatures on a petition. Judging by the way Republican gubernatorial candidates got scammed last year by collectors of fake signatures, it seems safe to say the Michigan Republicans are not likely to accomplish this.

The current local GOP would be hardpressed to organize a two-car funeral. But it will take more than one mere bill to restore Michigan’s labor unions to the power and prestige they enjoyed several decades ago.

At present, an era of corruption in the

United Auto Workers union may soon give way to a reform movement and new leadership. On Thursday, March 16, a federal monitor at the Westin Hotel resumed the international vote count for the union’s presidential election.

As of this writing, reformer Shawn Fain leads incumbent Ray Curry by 50.2% to 49.8% with 1,608 disputed ballots to be counted.

Along with loss of membership, that union has tarnished its image, with 13 union officials convicted in the federal probe that began in 2017.

What would Walter Reuther think? The UAW founder and president was the good angel on one big shoulder of the local labor movement.

Hoffa, by contrast, was the bad angel on the other side. He left the federal penitentiary quicker than expected in 1971 in one of President Richard Nixon’s more sinister deals.

Before trying to wrest back control of the Teamsters — an effort that led to his disappearance in 1975 — Hoffa was touring the country to speak out for the good cause of prison reform.

Some of what he said was dramatic.

“Men get raped in prison,” Hoffa told me. “Prison turns men into homosexuals.”

Perhaps I should have paused and thought things through before blurting the obvious follow-up question to Hoffa. “Anybody bother you in prison?” I asked him, clearly in the context of the conversation.

At this time, more than 50 years ago, Hoffa was 58 years old and physically fit. He had his Hoffa helmet hair — wet and combed directly back, like bristles on a porcupine. He spoke in terse bursts of words and his presence radiated the tense air of a clenched fist.

Suddenly, a light bulb went off over my head — a dim bulb, to be sure. I noticed Hoffa glancing at his bodyguard and the bodyguard glancing back to Hoffa. It occurred to me that my question to such a man (essentially, “Did you get raped in prison?”) might have been a trifle indelicate.

Perhaps these two guys — understandingly and graciously — decided at that very moment that my question was merely the sort of naive inquiry an earnest, young journalist might make if he was in support of Hoffa’s righteous campaign for prison reform.

Or, perhaps they decided it would be bad form to pound a kid reporter to a pulp in the presence of TV cameras.

For whatever reason, Hoffa gave me a polite answer.

“No, kid,” Hoffa said. “Nobody bothered me.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“Yeah,” Hoffa agreed. “That’s good.”

‘Right-to-work’

It’s time for a new era at the United Auto Workers.

SHUTTERSTOCK

Brooklyn Queen Brooklyn Queen

TALKS DR. PHIL, NEW MUSIC, AND TRANSITIONING FROM CHILD STAR TO TEENAGE DIVA

By Kahn Santori Davison

It’s 90 minutes before showtime and 17-year-old hip-hop artist Brooklyn Queen is relaxed and carefree. She’s dressed in a gray denim outfit, black boots, and a baggy leather Detroit Pistons jacket, and talking to the other hip-hop artists in the room while trading laughs with friend and collaborator Yanni Monett. There’s not one sign of nervousness, and nor should there be — she’s been on stages before she was old enough to pedal a bike.

“I started when I was 5,” she says. “I did a school talent show. My parents wrote me this rap and that’s when I knew I loved performing in front of people.”

Broolyn’s parents, both from Detroit, were hip-hop fans and even known to spit a bar or two. Her mother, a manicurist who goes by Nailtorious Kim, took Brooklyn’s early interest in music and actively sought opportunities for her. She performed in showcases, nonprofit events like “Coats for Kids,” and even did a kid-friendly remake of the DoughboyzCashout hit “Good Ass Day” when she was just 8.

During this time Brooklyn’s parents had developed a friendship with BMB Records owners Brian “Peanut Brown” and his wife Akia. BMB took Brooklyn under their wing, and Brooklyn’s breakout moment came when she was 11.

“They called me at two in the morning like, ‘You wanna come in the studio, an artist is acting up right now but we need to use the studio time,’” she says. “So I went to the studio and that’s when I made ‘Keke Taught Me,’ which is one of my biggest songs now.”

“Keke Taught Me” instantly became a teeny-bopper viral hit, amassing nearly 60 million YouTube views since it was uploaded in 2017. The bass-heavy bouncy track came with its own dance, and was essentially a TikTok song before TikTok. Brooklyn officially signed to BMB shortly after and has since established not only a career in music but also as a vlogger and influencer as well. (Both her YouTube and Instagram accounts have more than 1 million followers.)

“It was the first song that I ever seriously put out and it blew up!” Brooklyn says. “It was unreal. I’m thinking I’m living in a dream, like, this is not happening right now. And still today it’s unreal.”

Brooklyn has consistently dropped new music ever since. “Feeling So Wavy” was girly and cute, “Cowboy Slide” was another kiddie banger that came with its own dance, and songs like “Can’t Loose” and “Crop ‘Em Out” started to usher in her teenage maturity. Brooklyn will turn 18 this July, and she’s content letting the changes in her music happen naturally.

“If you look back at my older music, they are like real kiddie songs, but I’m growing up and going into my more mature music. … I feel like it just comes naturally,” she says. “A lot of people that I talk to before, they like, ‘So you’re going to stay kiddie and then when you turn 18 you’re going to transition?’ But I’m just me, so I’m going to act like me, so it’s natural.”

Her new music reflects that. Her song “Receipts” featuring Yanni Monett has a Kash Doll-ish aggressiveness and

Detroit punch to it as she raps: “Bitch you weak, and you know not to do that shit with me / Yeah, you know not to play with BMB, yeah you never match the energy you seek / Chill on me bitch, chill on me.”

Meanwhile, on “Trying to Breathe,” Brooklyn offers an authentic conscious hip-hop perspective on racial equality and police brutality: “Four hundred years we’ve been fighting for this / Living just to fight / We’re just fighting to live / It’s like we fighting for our rights / And a right to exist / Imagine how the world looks through the life of a kid.”

“I’m like, this is not Miley Cyrus,” she says through a laugh. “I’m going to act like me, I’m going to do me, and y’all are going to see that. And I feel like my supporters grow with me.”

Her journey has not been without bumps. Earlier this month, Booklyn and her parents made an appearance on Dr. Phil to address a woman that has been sending Brooklyn messages claiming that she is her real mother.

“She started contacting me through Instagram DM and at first I thought it was just a fan playing around,” Brook-

lyn says. “But over the years it was still the same lady reaching out that really thinks I’m her daughter.”

The woman commented while Brookyn was on Instagram Live last year, and Brooklyn quickly decided to add her to the Live session and address her for the first time — in front of her fans.

“I [thought] if I did that she may get it through her head that I’m not her daughter,” Brooklyn says. “She was like, ‘Let’s take this to Maury (Povich),’ and I said, ‘Let’s take it to Dr. Phil.’”

Although the woman wasn’t present at the Dr. Phil show, Brooklyn and her parents explained the issue, took a paternity test, and cleared any doubt about their daughter’s parentage. Even though they’ve taken the matter public, Brooklyn says the woman is still trying to make contact with her. She says she tried to file a restraining order but couldn’t, since the woman doesn’t live in Michigan. “They need to fix the laws because a lot of people have stalkers like this,” Brooklyn says.

Brooklyn and her parents even recorded and released a diss song about the woman. The song, titled, “Parental Advisory,” has added an entertaining twist to a very serious matter — and might be the first time a hip-hop artist has had her parents join her on a diss track.

“I just feel like it’s been a very stressful situation we’ve been going through and I’m one of those people that likes to express myself through music,” Brooklyn says. “So let’s just make a song about it, let’s just diss her.”

Despite the talk show detour, Brooklyn says she’s more focused on her career and music now more than ever. She’s a lifelong fan for Beyoncé and has similar aspirations.

“In 10 years Brooklyn Queen will most definitely have a Grammy,” she boastfully predicts. “I’ll be in a big film or a TV show. By 27 I’ll probably have a family, but I’m not worried about that right now. I just feel like I’ll be doing the same things I’m doing now but on a bigger level — acting, modeling, rapping, all that good stuff.”

KAHN SANTORI DAVISON

Stoop Lee Stoop Lee

IS HERE TO BUILD UP HIS PEERS

By Jeff Milo

Uplifting. If we summed up Stoop Lee in just one word, that would be it: uplifting.

“[At] the end of the day, I just wanna lift the city up and get people to see what’s going on here,” the artist, singer, and rapper otherwise known as Ade Olaniran says. “It’s bigger than me.”

Olaniran particularly wants you to see “what’s going on here” in the arts and music scene. He genuinely appreciates what a rising tide would mean for all the metaphorical boats, i.e. the artists, who reside around metro Detroit, and that’s why he’s concentrated a lot of his energy on forging a deep sense of community with both artists and audiences around the region.

The music Olaniran makes, as Stoop Lee, is also intrinsically uplifting: a cool composite of hip-hop, indie, and electro-pop that weaves in elements of soul and jazz. And while that certainly covers a lot of ground, genre-wise, that’s partly because Olaniran collaborates with such a wide range of versatile artists, each similarly operating either inside of multiple genres at once or outside of any genre whatsoever.

“I just have a love for so many different genres,” Olaniran says. “I can’t help but express all of those when I’m being my truest self as an artist. But it’s not something I’m necessarily trying to do or forcing — it just happens.” Olaniran says that “the foundations of learning how to make music” goes back to jazz, and to an extent smooth jazz — the radio station Smooth Jazz V98.7 “was played in our house all the time when I was growing up,” he says, but as he got older and expanded his pallet, he was drawn to groups that “blurred the lines between hip-hop and soul” like the Soulquarians collective: acts like Common, the Roots, Mos Def, and J Dilla. From there, he was electrified by the emergence of high-energy indie rock groups like Bloc Party in the early 2000s, particularly inspired by the group’s lead singer, Kele Okereke, “because I had never seen someone who looked like me making indie rock before, and he was Nigerian, too, so that really resonated with me.”

Olaniran’s second proper EP, which

paid homage to his Nigerian roots, was released in 2016, at the start of his senior year at MSU; he’s since released several singles and follow-up EPs, including last year’s Yellow Version Tape But it was while he was still on MSU’s campus when he hosted his first spectacle-sized showcase (inside a record shop), pointedly propping up fellow musicians around the Lansing scene. This was all part of his modus operandi: once conditions were safe enough, post-pandemic, Olaniran teamed up with Audiotree to host a blowout of a concert and party in Hamtramck inside Sanctuary Detroit, with a lineup that included five other dynamic, up-andcoming artists from disparate genres, some of whom were Olaniran’s fellow resident artists at Assemble Sound.

Last summer, Olaniran took things to the next level, curation-wise, when he hosted the inaugural “Cartoons & Stereo” festival at Bishop Park, combin-

ing music and skateboarding, along with what’s become a prevailing theme in Olaniran’s oeuvre and brand: a pure, simple celebration of discovery coated in a mixture of dream-big nostalgia and resolute optimism.

“You gotta try to stay optimistic, always,” Olaniran says. “There’s enough negativity in the world as it is. I know that optimism can teeter on the line of naivety, but nothing ever gets done by being pessimistic.” He added that he’s purposefully tapped back into the restorative serotonin and whimsy that was prevalent in the turn-of-themillennia-era cartoons that he was exposed to, “because so many of them featured kid protagonists achieving things that were much bigger than themselves,” he says. “That mentality never left me. My motto is: everybody eats! That’s what I believe. Trying to make it as a musician on my own is ambitious enough as it is, but why should

it stop there — why can’t I do more? If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, but I’m gonna at least try. I have to at least try. I would feel terrible for having these grand ideas and not even attempting them.”

Like so many younger artists these days, whether residents at the Assemble studios, or those who’ve hopped onto a Stoop Lee showcase as of late, Olaniran has had to (re)generate a lot of momentum after a total quarantine put us all on pause. “But it honestly feels like a fresh reset,” he said. “Before the pandemic, whenever I tried to get involved in the scene, it felt like there were more gatekeepers, but afterwards it felt like everything was leveled and that there was now more room for people to come in a build new stuff — room for people who were looking for things. It felt like this new world.”

That’s where you’ll find artists like, Ally Evenson, Curtis Roach, Pia The Band, and Whu Else, all of whom are on the lineup for this weekend’s show, with Stoop Lee, at El Club. “I really believe in every one of them,” Olaniran says. “And they all encapsulate cool new things that are going on in hip-hop, alternative, and indie spaces, so I think that all of them are ‘what’s next,’ and are what people should be checking out as far as those sounds in Detroit, specifically. To me, they’re the pillars of those genres in the city right now.”

And what do pillars do but lift things up?

Helping to lift up Olaniran’s performance and lyricism is his band tha culduhsac — an ensemble of jazz-funk virtuosos mostly made up of old friends from MSU. “I didn’t see a lot of people doing [hip-hop] to live music, and when I was leaving Michigan State, my last show there was with the full band,” he says. “So coming out of the pandemic, seeing that space was open for a new artist to come and make themselves known, I really wanted to make a splash and make a statement. [With tha culduhsac] it’s never just your run of the mill hip-hop or run of the mill rock, it’s an entirely different experience altogether.”

So, yes…, if you swing by El Club on Friday night, you’ll be able to experience a wide range of genres from the succession of sets performed by all the artists mentioned above. But you’ll also be able to find that assortment of genres percolating throughout Olaniran’s performance, augmented by his band, tha culduhsac, delivering earworm choruses with a pop sensibility, enriched by hip-hop beats, jazz samples, indie-rock guitars, and everything in between — including a surplus of positive energy emanating from the artist at the center of it all.

SAM MONENDO

Kaci the Model Kaci the Model

BECAME DETROIT'S BIGGEST AND BRIGHTEST CHILD STAR SINCE AALIYAH

By Kahn Santori Davison

Kaci, her sister Kalyx, and dancers Omaria (aka Mushy) and Kassidy are in the lobby of the New Center’s Fisher Building doing what energetic tween girls do best: make TikTok videos. Dressed in coordinating pink and white outfits, they pop, they lock, they spin, and they dip to Lil Boosie’s “Watch My Shoes.” A quick foray down Kaci the Model’s Instagram page and you’ll see that she does this a lot, a whole lot. At only 11 years old, Kaci is a rapper, singer, actor, and yes, model who has amassed more than 100,000 Instagram followers, 13,000 YouTube subscribers, and a fanbase that stretches across the country. She’s cute, talented, charming, and recently toured with teenage phenom Lay Lay. In 2021, she landed a major part in her biggest role to date in BET’s American Gangster Presents: Big 50 - The Delrhonda Hood Story

“I just started taking pictures of her when she was a baby,” her mother Corynn Smyth says. “She did her first audition at eight months [for a commercial]. From that point they started saying she looks just like a little Rihanna.”

Kaci went on to win multiple Rihanna look-alike contests, has been a mainstay on the child modeling circuit, and has been featured guest on The Wendy Williams Show, Access Hollywood, and the Tamron Hall Show. She stepped into a recording studio for the first time at 3 years old and by 4 she was releasing music.

“It was fun, I was just playing around,” Kaci says, reminiscing on her first time in the studio. “I liked hearing myself and I liked hearing the music.”

Her first official single was “Bubble Gum,” a fun and friendly bouncy song that sees Kaci rap,“I’m popping like bubblegum / My name is Kaci the model / You can catch me on the runway / I’m popping, popping, popping, popping / All the way from Monday to Sunday…”

“So I like to chew bubblegum, my favorite color is pink, and I’m always popping,” Kaci says. “So I put that together and I’m ‘popping like bubble gum.’”

“She’s different, she’s versatile, and it’s all clean music… I call it pop hiphop,” says Corynn.

“We don’t take shots at anybody, it’s fun, happy dancing,” adds father Keith Smyth. “She has one called, ‘I Did That’ [about] how she went from modeling to rapping. She tries to influence the other kids to be themselves.”

This past summer Kaci was named “Best Rapper” at Big Sean’s annual Don Weekend event.

“She went to the contest and auditioned for the rap category,” says Keith. “The judges liked her, they invited her to perform with the Pistons’ dancers.”

“It felt good to have somebody who’s actually from Detroit give me something and for them to also be from Detroit,” says Kaci. “I was excited about it.”

Along with all her entertainment ventures, Kaci also promotes her very own anti-bullying campaign.

“It’s basically trying to stop bullying,” Kaci says. “It’s just hurtful so we try to stop it. We go to different schools

and we perform and tell them to stop bullying.”

Though Keith and Corynn have made humongous progress in advancing Kaci’s career, they will be the first ones to tell you they aren’t masterminds or the Joe Jackson type. There was never an actual plan for all of this.

They say there hasn’t been one specific thing that has led to Kaci’s accomplishments. It’s the result of hard work, her going down so many avenues, and people with good intentions helping along the way.

“From the beginning she’s always stood out,” Keith says. “It’s been all organic, a lot of stuff comes to us from pure hearts and good resources.”

Labels and reality shows have reached out, but Keith admits they all want more control than he and Corynn are willing to give. He reminds us that she’s still a minor and she’s “our daugh-

ter.” They do entertain all offers, but Kaci isn’t needy. They’ve built a thriving business around her and they take a conservative approach when looking at opportunities and partnerships.

“She owns everything about her, she owns all her music, her publishing, she’s her own brand,” Keith says. “All her friends and peers are CEOs, each individual has their own brand. We actually work for her!”

Moving forward, Kaci plans to keep releasing singles, touring, making movies, and performing at schools. There’s also a podcast in the works.

Detroit hasn’t witnessed a young girl as talented as Kaci since the late great Aaliyah.

“They are like the future, they can change the world, a lot of attention is on the kids right now,” Keith adds.

“I want to be one of the big wigs,” Kaci says.

KAHN SANTORI DAVISON

Rose St. Germaine Rose St. Germaine

TEASE TRUTH FROM CLASSIC WESTERNS

By Hayley Cain

“Timing is everything if you’re gonna be a gunslinger,” Emily “Rose” Seward croons on the title track of Rose St. Germaine’s new eclectic Americana album. Released in November and mastered by Third Man Records, Gunslinger investigates the good, the bad, and the ugly lurking inside all of us.

“There’s a certain nostalgia to 1960s Spaghetti Westerns,” Seward says. “I was looking at the idea of our personal pasts, America’s past, and acknowledging the different lenses from which we can perceive time.”

It took more than two years for Seward and co-collaborator Alex Nouhan to drop the thirteen-track boot-stomper, Rose St. Germaine’s second full length since its 2020 debut, Visions. Along the way, the duo watched countless classic shoot-emups, rewound dusty reel-to-reel tape, and even stumbled upon a picturesque llama burial ground. (See the Gunslinger album cover art. R.I.P, Fuzzy.)

“We wanted to reinvent the Western genre while taking it in a more psychedelic direction,” says Seward, who plays piano, organ, and hammer dulcimer in the band. She pens Rose St. Germaine’s soul-bending tunes while guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Nouhan holds down a rootsy rhythm.

As Seward puts it, her creative partner, co-arranger, and recording engineer “flipped her world upside down” upon their first meeting in 2019.

The pair’s chemistry is as plain as the high noon sun. Combining elements of intimate dream pop, lush folk, and trippy, theatrical indie rock, Gunslinger flutters like a bird, kicks like a mule, and manages to leave no emotional stone left unturned.

Like most humans, Seward found that 2020’s plague brought introspection.

“I was reflecting a lot on my past, my experiences, and present relationships. Trauma is one aspect of the album,” she says, adding that it’s also about trying on different masks.

Opening track “My Kingdom” is a groovy, country-tinged force of nature

told from the perspective of an emotional bandit.

“This is someone with an awareness of their manipulation, but is fully charging ahead,” Seward says. “I’m processing the part of myself that wonders what goes on in peoples’ heads.”

Recorded primarily to analog tape, Gunslinger feels wise beyond its years — not unlike Seward, 27.

Growing up homeschooled in Southfield, the songwriter preferred silent movies, ’70s glam rock, and Rosemary Clooney ballads to whatever tween sensation the Disney Channel was offering up.

“I wasn’t isolated by any means, but I also didn’t know what the world was,” she says. “I lived vicariously through classic films.”

One of Seward’s earliest memories was attending classical and organ concerts with her parents. More than simple entertainment, young Seward recognized that music could equal power.

“I was terrified of the organ,” she says with a faraway smile. “It was so terrifying and scary to be surrounded by sound that way. I just knew I wanted to dominate it.”

Anyone who’s attempted to play theater organ knows this is a tall order. Determined, Seward rolled up her sleeves, first with piano lessons, then with serious organ studies. By her thirteenth birthday, she was winning over audiences at local and national concerts. Though her hard work paid off, the plot darkened. She suffered lifechanging abuse at this tender time.

“There’s a lot of trauma wrapped up with that period of my life,” says Seward. “I said ‘screw music.’ I was in high school when I decided I wanted to become a teacher.”

Seward, who graduated from Central Michigan University and proudly teaches high school social studies, has since allowed her musical passion to roost.

Built in the 1940s, her Ferndale home is a quirky-cozy testament to the singer’s creative passions. A painting depicting one of many alter egos adorns the living room wall. The

persona — part of her work in Detroit clown performance art troupe, BURN mARALAGO — is “Skeeball,” “an exiled alien clown who continues to try, and fails, to make Earth-friends.”

She says there is some connection between the masks she wears, both in song and on stage.

“The songs or skits I find most effective are about fundamentally parodying real experiences or deep issues that we all have,” she says.

During our interview, the artist’s two dachshunds, Coney and Fred, clack across the creaky hardwood floors of

her home studio. Track “Tennessee” was inspired by her journey to the state aftering hearing about a busted puppy mill.

“My friend and I jumped in my car, and in 24 hours, we had a dozen dachshunds,” she laughs.

Four years ago, when Seward first relocated to Ferndale, her life wasn’t all so clear. It’s no wonder why she credits Gunslinger as a huge source of accomplishment, personally and professionally.

“I had written all these songs when I was in college for teaching. I didn’t know what to do with them and I just wanted somebody to record demos,” she says, adding that Nouhan and founding drummer Brendan Tracey were instrumental to her 2019 return to music.

“The whole reason I had this backlog to share with Alex was because I was using the songs as a therapy tool,” she adds. “I found I was able to express things in song and understand my situation better by writing music.”

At times hauntingly minimal (see: delicately-plucked opener “Seed Song”) and totally otherworldly (check out Seward’s hammer dulcimer solo on ‘Phantom Promises’), Gunslinger is a homegrown job, mixed by Nouhan at his Ferndale studio (Both, LLC) and released by Detroit label Remove Records. A big-shot producer in Nashville, however, provided some much-appreciated feedback.

“This producer worked with Harry Styles, and he liked our mixes. We felt ‘mission accomplished.’ We weren’t sure how they would translate, so we had to take them to the best speakers in the world,” she says. “Going to Tennessee was a Gunslinger odyssey, a field trip.”

So, has the band managed to cast out their demons and trot into the sunset? As long as Seward’s kicking, she’ll likely be venturing into the unknown, making music from the chaos of this wild, wild life.

Bad guys, beware.

“In the end it doesn’t matter how good of a gunslinger you are,” she says. “If you’re timing’s off, you’re going to get gunned down.”

ANNA LYSA

DREAMY AMERICANA DUO

Marv Won Marv Won

NEXT BATTLE IS PERSONAL

By Alex Washington

'S

If you’ve ever seen him rap in a battle, you might know Marv Won to be sharp, charismatic, and funny at the same time. For over 20 years, he has made a name for himself in the battle rap world while making time for his own music projects in between.

“Battle rap is for the crowd,” Marv says. “Ultimately you just want to win the room over. With my music, I have a legit plan and I have tunnel vision when it comes to it. I know what I want, and I know what I want to deliver, and I’m steadfast on it — the music is for me.”

He was introduced to rap as a little kid by his older cousin Chuck, who he says was one of his earliest influences and someone he loved to be around. By third or fourth grade, Marv Won began to write raps of his own, and by the time he got to high school he was recording in studios and battling at lunch.

Marv says he knew being a rapper was his life’s purpose very early on. “I’ve never had as strong of a desire to do anything the way it is when I do music; it’s a gift and a curse for sure,” says Marv. “There are a lot of things that fucking fell by the wayside, there are a lot of things that I let die in pursuit of this, like relationships and school. I know people who fucking hate their lives, and by the grace of God I don’t have to. I wake up everyday and do what I love to do.”

In the early 2000s, Marv Won went from battling at lunchroom tables in high school to rapping his way around battles in the city. In 2002, the release of the movie 8 Mile not only thrust battle rapping into the spotlight, but the film’s deleted scene with Marv Won battling Eminem would get him noticed, too.

“At that time, I was one of the people that you had to see, and this is before YouTube,” says Marv. “I started battling because I felt it was free promotion to get my music heard. I started battling because if I did good in these battles, people would ask ‘Who is this?’ I never had the desire to ever want to be the best battle rapper.”

Although Marv Won believed that battle rapping would be a fast track to

getting his music heard, it didn’t quite work out that way. He was offered a few record deals, both as a part of the group Fat Killahz and solo deals that just didn’t work out.

“I did some shit with Interscope, I had won this contest and the prize was you got to fly out to L.A. and record with Interscope and have a meeting. At the time Hex [Murda] was my manager, and we went out there to take full advantage of this,” Marv says. “We went to the meeting, played them the songs, and they were like, ‘This is much more than we expected. We thought you would be happy just recording in a studio, but we don’t have the time or budget for you.’”

Even though some major deals had fallen through for him, Marv Won still managed to work with a label. He was one of the early artists that helped jumpstart Iron Fist Records, the label founded by the late D12 rapper Proof. The Searching for Jerry Garcia rapper had been quite instrumental throughout Marv’s career, including helping him land a spot in a rap battle hosted by MTV.

When asked about his relationship with Proof, the energy around Marv shifts. It’s been nearly two decades

since the D12 rapper’s death, but Marv says it’s an emptiness that hasn’t been able to be filled.

“He was the bridge between where we wanted to go and where we were, because he was never too far away. You see him at the fucking VMAs on Monday, and on Wednesday he would be at the Lush rapping with us,” says Marv. “The city as a whole has never recovered from that, and not just on some music shit, he was a great ambassador for the city. I legitimately miss my friend.”

His new project is due out later this year, and although there isn’t an official release date yet, Marv Won has already secured features from a few familiar rappers like Elzhi and Guilty Simpson. While he says there isn’t a project that he’s done that he’s not proud of, he feels like this next project will be the one that people will really like.

“The current project that I’m working on is my best body of work, but that’s because I feel like all of my projects are my children,” says Marv. “I feel like this is the one where people are going to be like, ‘This isn’t a fluke, he’s a consistently incredible artist.’ I’m of the music and I still get excited to create.”

Wed 03/22

Happy Birthday, DANNY RIEF & ARIEL ALESNA!

Fri 03/24

cinecyde/the hourlies/ search & destroy Doors@9pm/$5 Cover

FIREBALL FRIDAY’S! $5 FIREBALL SHOTS ALL DAY!

Happy Birthday, dena walker!

Sat 03/25 matt smiley’s birthday ruckus II Lans nam/recursive/asklepius/ lulu summerfield/find familiar Doors@8pm/$5 Cover

Sun 03/26 bar open @11am

Marche du nain rouge parade party w/ lady dj’s bangerz & jamz Party@1pm/$10 Cover

Mon 03/27 FREE POOL ALL DAY

Tues 03/28

B.Y.O.R. BRING YOUR OWN RECORDS (WEEKLY)

Open Decks @9pm/NO COVER IG: @byor_tuesdays_old_miami

Happy Birthday, sheila tequila!

Coming Up: 03/31 MATT BASTERDSON/jo serrapere & the lafawndas/phil profitt & his fast fortunes 04/01 PARKHOUSE NIGHT 04/06 TIGERS OPENING DAY 4/07 Twin deer/dj alright (detroit)/animal scream/zack keim 4/08 BANGERZ & JAMZ (MONTHLY) 4/14 DJ SKEEZ & DJ

RICHARD TAYLOR

in us, and many other women out there. The song starts with ‘I got daddy issues.’ That’s true for us. My father wasn’t in my life, no real men in my life, there were no strong relationships or examples. I have so many trust issues, so many different things to handle when it comes to how I view men and what I think about for the future of relationships.”

Though Aint Afraid has a very current and contemporary sound, they know the appearance of twin Muslim sisters tends to throw people off.

“Sometimes they say things like, ‘Ya’ll speak English?’ ‘Ya’ll don’t have an accent?’” says WiZdumb.

“People don’t expect us to talk about what we do or they don’t expect us to be the ones behind the voice. The shock factor is actually in a beautiful way. We represent so many things — Black women, Muslim women, young women,” adds Straingth.

Their Muslim faith is woven all through the themes of their music without verbally being centered around it. It’s obvious by the hijabs and chadors that they are Muslim women, but they don’t address their identity in an over-the-top way in their music — just elegant written songs that represent all the attributes from their faith.

“I think the beautiful thing about showing some aspects of our faith is that we have the same values as you,” Straingth says. “We all want peace, love, and unity, and we ain’t afraid to share positivity. The beautiful thing about being able to incorporate our faith into our music is that you don’t even know we’re incorporating it.”

The sisters of Aint Afraid admit that sometimes there is some negativity that pops up in the comments section of a social media post, but they pay it no mind. They’re beautifully focused on their purpose and their music so much that they don’t let anything knock them off their square. They believe in each other and they feel their brand will not only cross all race and spiritual boundaries but will make a significant impact on mainstream music.

“Aint Afraid can be a stamp that’s bigger than music,” WiZdumb says. “Community work and activism is the core of who we are. I would love to have community centers in our name, or a program put in place to help develop underprivileged communities, to educate them and give them resources to continue to help themselves. … This is the life we always wanted to live. We’re living out our 8-year-old [self]’s dream.”

Checker Checker

There’s a new two-piece rock ’n’ roll band in town — and no, they aren’t pretending to be siblings.

They’re called Checker, and they’re Cinquex on guitar and McKenna Fain on drums. Cinquex, 25, is from Detroit, while Fain, 23, is from the suburbs.

“From the outside looking in, we’re like a PR person’s wet dream,” Cinquex jokes. “Like, ‘Oh my god, a Black dude and a white woman!’”

Their name comes from the game checkers, which are black and white, Fain says, but the theme of duality also carries through to the band’s influences. Cinquex says he grew up mostly listening to hip-hop acts like Lil Wayne (“Maybe I just wanted attention,” he says when asked why he first picked up the guitar) while Fain says she loves Detroit rock bands like the Go and the Pizazz. “Together, it’s like this really cool mix of something more gritty and something more grandiose,” she says of their style.

The band started about a year ago, after Fain spotted Cinquex playing guitar at an open mic night at Ferndale’s New Way Bar. It was his first time performing there, and he was wearing an American flag hat. “I was like, you know, if I go down to this place, what’s

ROCK BAND IS PLAYING TO WIN

By Lee DeVito

the best thing I can wear to camouflage?” he says.

At the time, Fain was starting a new band and looking for bandmates. “I was like, well, they’ve got to be good, and they’ve got to be hot,” she says. Before Cinquex had even left the stage, Fain says she ran up and asked him if he was in a band.

“I just saw a star,” she says.

The next day they started playing together, initially as a three-piece, but soon Fain moved from bass to drums and they became a duo.

“It was more rockin’,” Fain says.

“And somehow louder,” Cinquex adds.

The two say they practice nearly every day, and perform multiple times a month. The band’s next show is opening for Duende on Saturday, March 25 at Detroit’s Outer Limits Lounge. They’re also in the process of recording their songs and hope to tour in the summer. “We’re just trying to get sponsored by Prius, because we can fit everything we need in that car,” Fain says.

“If we’re going to be in a band … we can’t just be good in Detroit,” Cinquex says. “We have to be great on the national level, on an international level. I don’t want to just be known in the city.”

The two say they’re competitive because they used to play sports; Fain was on a roller derby team for seven years, while Cinquex says growing up he did soccer, tennis, baseball, tennis, golf, diving, swimming, and lacrosse.

Fain cuts right to the chase: “We want to be bigger than the Beatles,” she says.

They’re tired of the endless “rock is dead” debates. “If you think rock is dead, all you have to do is go to a Detroit show,” Cinquex says, although they think mainstream acts like Machine Gun Kelly and Greta Van Fleet are too concerned with their rock ’n’ roll image and not the music.

In Checker, both share vocal duties, and say they work hard on writing lyrics in an attempt to give their songs a universal appeal. They say they also write songs that stand on their own.

“We can honestly go on stage and play every one of our songs on just a fucking acoustic guitar and a bucket,” Cinquex says. “It would be just as good.”

They say they also hope they can help be an example for others yet to come.

“I always tell McKenna, Wu-Tang said it best: ‘Wu-Tang is for the children,’” Cinquex says. “Checker is for the children.”

JOE MAROON

Problematic Problematic

Black Hottie Black Hottie

By Eleanore Catolico

After recounting fragments of her DJ origin story while sitting on a bar stool inside downtown Detroit’s Paramita Sound, 29-yearold Nyambura Njee unspools a white receipt more than three feet long. The scroll lists all the clothing treasures she found at local thrift shops that day. Her eye-catching fashion taste is in demand as she helps others aspire to create an aesthetic fantasy which may mirror the one she’s built all on her own.

In the hum-drum daylight hours, Njee is a personal trainer, stylist, and sometimes moonlights as a model, having appeared in magazines and local art projects. Under glittery nightclub lights, she transforms into a DJ named Problematic Black Hottie, Detroit’s empress of booty-bouncing, funky, and tropical dance beats hailing from the African diaspora. Her music is equally influenced by female rappers like Megan Thee Stallion, while her fashion takes cues from the Y2K princesses of yesteryear, as she subsisted on a media diet of TV shows like That’s So Raven and Lizzie McGuire and bopped along to R&B showstoppers 702, SWV, and Destiny’s Child, to name a few, all while growing up on two continents.

The renaissance woman is fully in her renaissance period. Over the last five years, she completed a DJ residency at Paramita Sound, which provides a platform for the city’s veteran DJs and the next generation of record-spinning talent, created the popular dance party Hotties World at Spot Lite, and DJed at hip haunts like the Big Pink and the Mo Pop Music Festival. One of the crown jewels of her still-blossoming career was opening for the scintillating and raunchy Chicago rapper CupcakKe at the Crofoot in Pontiac. Problematic Black Hottie is unapologetically feminine and Black and her ascension into

the city’s nightlife sphere happened despite some haters and skeptics.

Njee’s DJ nights were created by a hottie for hotties. But they are more than a showcase for her pastel-tinged soft power and the divine feminine.

Njee thinks of herself as an archivist of a global sound, and women artists in particular. In a field still dominated by male DJs, she hopes her shows inspire babes twerking on the dance floor to embrace their inner bad bitch while also getting a sonic history lesson as they sweat and vibe inside the club. Otherwise the music that isn’t getting played, Njee says, could die in the pub-

lic’s imagination.

“DJs are really responsible for shaping a lot of people’s, like, music preferences and tastes, and therefore, in some ways, shaping their perspectives about the world in multiple ways because music teaches us about a lot of things. It’s a tool of socialization,” Njee says. “And so if men are the only ones getting to choose this music that is being played, that’s not fair.”

Njee, a daughter of Kenyan immigrants and two cultures, was born into a creative family. Her mother was an artist, and her father was a famous DJ in his home country, as well as a paint-

er, sculptor, and jewelry maker. “He was an artistic jack of all trades,” she says. Her parents also owned a hotel with a club in Kenya. Late at night, Njee remembers sneaking out of her bedroom as a grade schooler and going into the club, immersing herself in dancehall, afrobeat, and reggae jams. “Dang, this is good,” Njee remembers thinking of those intoxicating rhythms. She’d split her time between Africa and America growing up, but it was that taste of the nightlife as a kid which helped cultivate her musical taste. Eventually, Njee and her family moved to Detroit when she was 15, and she’d attend Henry Ford Academy.

Fast forward to post-secondary life, Njee viewed herself more as an academic hottie rather than the bubblegum-infused tastemaker she’d one day become. She studied sociology and Africology during college and planned on becoming a professor. Njee says she then got accepted into a graduate program at New York University in her mid-20s.

She soon realized she wasn’t feeling the scholarly path, so she told herself to take a break from hitting the books. “You know what? I want to explore my creativity,” Njee recalls. “And so yeah, I was like, I’m not ready to go to grad school. I just want to do my own thing for now.” The degree attainment hustle wasn’t all for naught and later proved an influential force, specifically in the way she curates often funky and soulful sounds. “The degree that I chose, and what I [studied] is like a very big part of like, how I think about the world and how I think about problems and see problems,” she says. “And so I definitely did use a sociological and anthropological lens when it came to DJing.”

Around the same time, her attentiongrabbing moniker, Problematic Black Hottie, was born out of millennial pop culture internet discourse. One day, she was perusing Instagram and found an Instagram post about Mean Girls, and a comment referring to “unfriendly Black hotties” caught Njee’s eye. Another commenter mentioned the word “problematic,” so Njee thought to splice the words together and use the name Problematic Black Hottie for her Instagram account. She later adopted the name for her DJ persona, which also serves as her official logo, the name emblazoned on her merchandise, including stickers and Barbie-pink tote bags. The name, in its boldness, inspires curiosity and adoration. “People love the name,” Njee says. “It grabs people’s attention.”

Njee, a short and petite Black woman with close-cropped bleach blonde hair, somehow manages to always look like an alluring fashion doll. While we’re sitting together at Paramita’s bar sipping on glasses of water on a Tuesday

DAZZLES LOCAL CLUBS WITH AFROBEAT AND GHETTO TECH SOUNDS — WHILE SPORTING ENVY-INSPIRING Y2K FITS

ARRIELLE MOCK

afternoon, she’s wearing a casual look which still pays homage to two of her music idols: a black T-shirt with a monochromatic portrait of the sultry and mysterious songstress Sade and printed patterned pants with faces of reggae legend Bob Marley — a rare find, Njee tells me.

In the heat of performances, she’s worn zebra-print tops paired with hot-pink shades as well as a cerulean two-piece with a cloud-white overcoat with fuzzy trim — the kinds of ‘fits the fashionable baddies among us would die for. There is full-throttled intention behind her style, Njee says, and fashion plays a pivotal role in the atmosphere she’s creating while DJing.

“It all goes together. For me, it’s all an expression of my world. So just finding more ways to have other people experience what’s happening on the inside of me, you know, and one side of my mind,” she says. “And so for me, it’s all related, like my, my physical, my visual aesthetic, my music.”

Her path toward DJ stardom was far from pristine. Early on, Njee says, some local parties wouldn’t book her to perform. “So I’ve been inspired by a lot of the people that have tried to put roadblocks in my way,” she says.

“And so that’s actually given me a lot of fuel. While it may be frustrating right there in that moment, you can kind of change your perspective on it, like, ‘OK, well, if they won’t book me then let me start my own party.’” So Njee ended up starting Hottie’s World, her ongoing party, at local venue Spot Lite, and so far, has been successful.

Venturing on her own and breaking through the local DJ scene meant doing so on her own terms. Njee says she’s had to overcome some haters who she says disrespected and treated her poorly because she is a woman DJ. The COVID-19 pandemic ruined some of Njee’s momentum and she didn’t play shows for two years. But while on lockdown, she took the time to hone her craft, learning to smooth out transitions between songs. The key to make it as a DJ, which Njee admits is somewhat of a cliche, is being your authentic self, no matter where you are. Because of that steadfast commitment to keeping it real, she’s cultivated key professional relationships and slowly built out the PBH empire.

Andrey Douthard, the owner of Paramita Sound, is one of Njee’s biggest champions. It was inside this space where Njee secured her first DJ residen-

cy and played a party series called 94 to East Africa, alongside local legend DJ Nick Speed. That harmonic collision of old-school and new-school talents is exactly the vibe Paramita embraces.

“I am always a proponent for looking for new and honest things,” says Douthard, who wants the space to support new voices, perspectives, and sounds. “PBH has this like undeniable energy, right? This kind of energy that is infectious. It’s really fun. And there’s a lot of joy in that.”

That sonic joy is a product of diligence and discipline. Njee says she wants her mixes to feel fresh, always on the hunt for striking music. She listens to more than 200 new songs each month, which she’ll add to her ongoing sound archives, after tolerating hundreds of other not-so-stellar tunes.

Njee is also battle-tested. She knows Detroit is a DJ city, and crowds won’t suffer foolishness or mediocrity, so she makes sure her DJing is on point. She overprepares every time she performs. She’s intentional about cultivating safe places to party for women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ folks. And once she’s on stage, DJing, in her eyes, is a dialogue, not a monologue, with her often multicultural crowd. First and

foremost, you gotta read the room.

“Feeling, watching the crowd responding to them, meeting them where they’re at. If the crowd is chillin’, and that’s where they’re at,” she says. “So you got to kind of pay attention to those things.”

About five years into DJing, Njee is still dreaming big. The 94 to East Africa party will make its glorious return in the spring. Her PBH merch is sold in hip, trendy, and queer-friendly shops like Not Sorry Goods in Ferndale. She has gigs lined up when hot girl summer finally arrives. One day, she hopes to be a booked-and-blessed international DJ. A few renowned parties in Paris and Scotland are on her dream list. Life is pretty good.

“I’m actually feeling better than I’ve had in the past. I’ve had a lot of things that have confirmed my faith in myself and in my vision that I have for what I’m trying to create,” Njee says. “I’m feeling pretty good, pretty secure. Just trying to stay focused and continuing to maintain integrity over the vision that I have, and just making sure that I’m being true to myself.” Right now, it’s Problematic Black Hottie’s world, and we’re all just fortunate enough to be living in it. Baddies, unite.

Ahya Simone Ahya Simone

HARPIST

BREAKS BOUNDARIES

By Randiah Camille Green

A slender trans woman dressed in white ruffles sits alone onstage with her harp and a microphone. The instrument towers over her petite frame as her dainty fingers glide across the strings. She’s like an angel in orange eye shadow, radiating elegance and “she does what the fuck she wants” energy.

Ahya Simone does, in fact, do whatever the fuck she wants. She doesn’t like putting parameters on her creativity or being bound by one genre. The harpist and vocalist infuses R&B, ambient, and jazz into classical music. She’s also a composer, community activist, and filmmaker on some “catch me if you can” type shit.

One week she’s playing at a festival in Belgium, the next in Hawaii, and two weeks later, she’s heading to Japan just because she can. When we catch up with her on a Zoom call, she’s hanging

out in New York where she should be in the studio but “stayed [her] ass in bed” because she was tired that day instead.

“I go from high art spaces to the jazz club or the fucking rave,” she tells Metro Times. “I make soundscapes for exhibitions in Vienna, or I’ll partially score a Louis Vuitton fashion film... You might also catch me singing in German, so people don’t really know how to market me. I’m also not trying to be pigeonholed as a ‘trans artist.’ I identify as a multidisciplinary artist and that has been my way of defining myself against all of these stereotypes of what it means to be Black, and trans, and a woman, and a harpist that’s not a classical harpist.”

To date, Simone has only released one single, “Frostbite” in 2020, but she has been featured on songs with artists like Kesswa, Kelela, and Shigeto. She

KASHIRA DOWRIDGE

collaborated with dream hampton to score hampton’s 2018 film Treasure and was the first Black trans woman to receive a Kresge Artist Fellowship in 2018.

Despite being anything but traditional, Simone is a classically trained musician. She began singing in church when she was younger and started playing the harp in high school at Cass Tech, where she performed in choir and orchestra ensembles.

She studied harp and classical voice at Wayne State University and was the principal harpist for the WSU Wind Symphony, but got bored with classical music upon graduating.

“After I graduated, I was in this weird spot of like, I don’t really know what to do with this degree,” she says. “I didn’t really want to sit in the [orchestra] pit. I was sitting in a pit with a bunch of white people, and just looking around like, wow, I can’t do this. This is not where I feel most expressive and most comfortable. Before then, I was doing the typical harpist thing playing fucking Tchaikovsky, playing impromptus and concertos and stuff that. While it was great for my technique and my learning, it didn’t feed my soul.”

Without any other examples of harpists making the multifaceted music

that was in her heart, Simone felt discouraged and stepped away from the instrument for nearly three years. While she lists Brandee Younger, Alice Coltrane, and Dorothy Ashby as inspirations, it wasn’t until she discovered the DJ Juliana Huxtable in 2016, who is also a trans woman, that she knew her art had a place in the world.

“I was online and this beautiful woman came across my screen, and I found out she was just like me,” Simone says. “She was this stunning DJ, artist, social critic, and she was just so dope to me. I was just like, ‘Yo!’ I wrote her on Facebook and was like, if you ever need a harp player for anything let me know. She didn’t respond to me for like, a year.”

When Huxtable finally did respond, it was with an invitation for Simone to play with her in Scotland. Of course, she said yes and toured with Huxtable off and on for several years, playing in the Netherlands, Portugal, Vancouver, and beyond. She quit her job doing university research at the time and said, “Bet. It’s this music shit or die.”

“It was at that point where I was like, ‘Oh I can be in these avant-garde and high art spaces too, so I started writing my own music and I started playing R&B,” she remembers. “It was just this

kind of unfolding. My family was like, ‘Just keep a steady job and do your music on the side,’ but it was too much for me. I could not handle just this feeling of splitting myself … It was making me depressed. I was away from my element and what made me feel alive … I haven’t worked a 9-to-5 since 2017. I quit that white-ass job on Juneeteenth, girl, and I hit it.”

Simone is also the writer, director, and star of Femme Queen Chronicles, a comical web series about the lives of four trans women in Detroit. She came up with the concept after a Trans Sistas of Color Project meeting when she and members of the organization were talking about their experiences growing up Black and trans in Detroit. Simone helped found the organization following the murder of local trans activist Amber Monroe.

She and the Femme Queen Chronicles crew have been working with producer Janet Mock to develop the show into a full television series, but haven’t had any luck getting it picked up so far.

“We were just telling our funny-ass stories of what we be going through and it was so funny that I was just like damn bitch, we need our own show,” she says. “You know, I came up with

Jack Droze Jack Droze

that idea once I quit my job in 2017, I released it in 2018, and it’s been in over 40 or so film festivals and screenings worldwide. It just went viral on TikTok and screened in Australia last week. We pitched it to so many networks and nobody wanted it. But I’m not going to stop making film work, even if this never sees a TV screen. I still remain hopeful and I believe in the vision of Femme Queen Chronicles.”

Her most recent project is Jewel Tones Detroit, a Black-woman-led collective that curates performances by Black artists she says don’t usually get booked as headliners. The group’s first residency called Black Bottom was at Spot Lite in February, and they are working on the next installment.

Simone’s debut album has been in the works for the past four years, and she hopes to release it in the fall of 2023. Her working title is Iridescence, named after a piece by French harpist Carlos Salzedo.

“It’s a beautiful, atonal, weird-ass piece that I still love to this day,” Simone says about the composition her album will be named for.

It’s incredibly fitting for the eccentric life, defying all definitions, that Simone leads.

By Jeff Milo

Jack Droze & Lilahk have been performing together long before they had a figurative platform, or a literal stage. Down alleyways or in liquor store parking lots, drumming on upturned buckets beside Dumpsters or eventually freestyle rapping at any given social gathering, each seemed particularly energized by the other’s presence and creative company. And along the way, as the years went by, even as others in their friends group drifted or grew apart, Droze and Lilahk, aka Khalil Heron, and only grew closer, bonding together like brothers; bonding over music, most of all.

FORGED THROUGH FRIENDSHIP, WILL NEVER NOT 'TRY' & Lilahk

Two months ago, they released their debut album, I’m Try, a dynamic set of 15 candid and contemplative hip-hop tracks, blending Heron’s beats and production with Droze’s emotive lyri-

& Lilahk

cism. In a way, this album’s been a long time coming, the culmination of nearly a decade-long friendship.

“Honestly, it was hip-hop,” says Heron, who also contributes his own bars throughout their new album. “Hip-hop is what connected us!” But it was also their sense of humor — they both tapped into a similar wavelength of sardonicism and easygoing goofiness, shifting from the roguish nature of bucket drumming into indulging in improvised comedy bits together. (They’re also self-ascribed grammar-

nerds who are well-aware that their album’s title prankishly defies syntax.) “But we’re both hip-hop fanatics,” Heron continues. “We could talk about it endlessly together. And since I was this half-decent beat-boxer who could make a workable beat with whatever was around me, we eventually started going around at parties just seeing who wanted to rap with us.”

Droze recalls their penchant for coming up with freestyle raps together, even if they weren’t on a stage. “I distinctly remember where Khalil and I would be

hyping each other up in the backyards of whatever house show we were at,” Droze says. In this way, Droze says he basically “performed at every single house party that we went to together,” whether that was rapping in random kitchens or basements, or out on the sidewalks of Woodbridge. “It’s the cypher,” Droze exclaims, recalling how this strengthened his own capacity for rapping. “That will forge you!”

What partly helped forge Heron, individually as an artist and as a producer was, inevitably, the pandemic. He debuted as Lilahk during in the early summer of 2020, releasing the visceral lo-fi hip-hop track “Get Away,” which provided an effective conduit for a certain pent-up anger, but also allowed him to flex his talents. “The leap I’ve made from that track to this new album with Jack,” Heron says, “is the distinction, now, between anger and stagnation; it’s a productive anger that’s moving toward something better. We’re not locked up anymore and I’m feeling a lot less frozen-in-time than I once did, feeling less like wanting to get away and wanting more to be proactive and engage with the world around me –the world around us!”

Droze recalls instantly commiserating with that anger “coming through” Heron’s music when he emerged as Lilahk, and admitted that the songs on

I’m Try continue to articulate a considerable amount of that yearning for catharsis. Droze praises Heron’s eversharpening talents for beat production, noting that it was his instrumentals that provided the spark for nearly every track on the album. The collaboration began in the winter of 2021, initially from a (safe) distance, swapping tracks via email and steadily building from there. “People listen to this project and say it’s cohesive,” Droze says, “but that’s because of our relationship. We’ve been friends for such a long time, we know how to work with each other. And this was a great way to stay tight with each other during quarantine.”

“Lots of phone calls and emails,” Heron adds. “I’d send [Droze] a beat and he would write and add lyrics and then we would just talk about it — we would talk about [a single track] for weeks before getting together, physically, to record it.”

“Some of these songs, from the demo stage onward, span huge amounts of time,” Droze says. “So you have all this thought being poured into each one, but then they wound up being really well executed by the time we recorded together.”

As Heron found himself reaching another level, creatively, on his own as a beatmaker in 2020, Droze was able to tap back into something vital inside of himself when their collaboration was eventually initialized in early 2021. “Because I’ve been rapping since I was 12,” Droze says, “it’s just that I haven’t put anything together to put out since 2016! And that’s because I was going through life changes, just handling personal things and getting my priorities in order.” Droze had been working on music and collaborating with fellow artists in the scene regularly in the mid-2010s before taking a prolonged hiatus of sorts. “I was keeping my distance way before the six-feet-thing,” Droze quips. “But, then, in that way, this album has been an opportunity for both of us to process things and then to come together…”

“...come together and then merge,” Heron adds. “Making this album has been a wind beneath both our wings. Our process was to start with however you feel right now, right in this moment — make whatever it is authentic to the present. I’d send my authentic present moment to Jack to make sure that his authentic present was compatible with what I had, and then we would create this little time capsule together.” This tellingly resulted in tracks that literally examine “reality,” but also cultural inheritance, coming of age, class structure, parenthood, and so much more. The first lyric of the first track is, fittingly, “this is happening!”

“Both of our lives were hectic over these last two years,” Heron says, “with a lot of growth and loss.” They both agreed that the narrative style of the lyrics was purposefully aspiring to address the wide range of emotional upheaval inherent to the human experience; because they wanted to make something that was bigger than just another rap record. “And now everyone’s been gassing us up since [the album] came out,” Heron says, adding, “which … allegedly, they say we deserve…”

“...but we would do another album even if we didn’t get those props,” Droze says, and, given their humble history down those alleyways or in those backyards, it’s more than believable. It’s

believable given their friendship, alone.

“It seems a lot of what our listeners have caught on to,” Heron says, “is just our chemistry, our friendship, our story. You can hear it in the ways this album came together even if it’s not explicitly in the lyrics.”

Droze clarifies that another reason he stepped away was “that I couldn’t play the game the way other people could,” he says. “I couldn’t politic the right way in the music scene.” But now that he’s back in the mix, with Heron specifically, he admits that it does “feel like a resurgence.”

“I just knew that this album was the album,” he adds.

The album that they made together

fits that cliche-albeit-accurate parlance of a record you can throw on whenever.

It has that polyaura je ne sais quoi, where the hooks, the groove, the vibe are all so enticing yet also so subtle, where the lyrics have that relatable ring to them, like these are thoughts that you, yourself, have been ceaselessly kicking around in your head, too. But along with the subtle, the lo-fi, the low-key, there is a simmering urgency, a certain kind of anger, and above all, a thoughtfulness.

You’re listening to two longtime friends find the perfect eureka moments, resolved to continue to try — to try to figure out what comes next, what to do next.

COURTESY PHOTO

WHAT’S GOING ON

Select events happening in metro Detroit this week. Be sure to check all venue website before events for latest information. Add your event to our online calendar: metrotimes.com/ AddEvent.

MUSIC

Wednesday, March 22

Live/Concert

Detroit Sound Unplugged 7 p.m.; Valentine Distilling, 161 Vester Ave., Ferndale; $10.

John Mayer 7:30 p.m.; Little Caesars Arena, 2645 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $49.50+.

Magnolia Park: Baku’s Revenge Tour 6 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $18.

Wizkid 7:30 p.m.; Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $39.50-$149.50.

Thursday, March 23

Live/Concert

Blue Thursdays 8 p.m.; Cadieux Cafe, 4300 Cadieux Rd., Detroit; $5.

Bodysnatcher, Angelmaker, Paleface, Distant 6 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $17.

Duke Newcomb Presents: The DOJO featuring Flwr.Chld 8 p.m.; The Blind Pig, 208 S 1st St, Ann Arbor; $10.

Inhaler 7 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $25.

Trapper Schoepp 8 p.m.; 20 Front Street, 20 Front St., Lake Orion; $18.

Wax Tailor with Kuf Knotz + Christine Elise 8:30 & 9 p.m.; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $20.

Friday, March 24

Live/Concert

Austin Meade 7 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $15.

Club 90’s Midnight Memories 1D Night (18+) 8:30 p.m.; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $17-$30.

EPIK HIGH 7 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $50.

Jim McCarty, Duke Tumatoe & The Power Trio 7:30 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $15+.

Pajamas & Stormy Chromer 8 p.m.; Blind Pig, 208 S. First St., Ann Arbor; $10.

SALIVA 7 p.m.; District 142, 142 Maple St., Wyandotte; $22-$35.

Sacred Concert: Samara Joy and Musique Noire 7 p.m.; Christ Church Cranbrook, 470 Church Rd., Bloomfield Hills; $20+.

SonReal, Sol 7 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $22+.

Strange Waves 9 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $5. The Meteors, The Cult of Spacecult 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $20.

VOLK 7 p.m.; PJ’s Lager House, 1254 Michigan Ave., Detroit; 10.

Huey Mnemonic 9 p.m.; Leland City Club, 400 Bagley St., Detroit; $15.

LUXE 10 p.m.; Willis Show Bar, 4156 Third St., Detroit; $15.

Marina w/ Gateo + Perish 9 p.m.; Alley Deck, 4120 Woodward, Detroit; Free before 10:30 p.m., $10 after.

Saturday, March 25

Live/Concert

CRAZY BABIES OZZY REBOURNE wsg Revelations the Iron Maiden Tribute and Chit 7 p.m.; District 142, 142 Maple St., Wyandotte; $18.

Damedot, Drego, Beno 7 p.m.; Harpo’s, 14238 Harper Avenue, Detroit; $50-$60.

David Morris 7 p.m.; Pike Room, 1 S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $15.

Detroit Queens of Jazz 7-11 p.m.; Greater Detroit Community Outreach Center, 20062 John R. St., Detroit; $35.

DUENDE!, Kelly Jean Caldwell Band, and Checker 8 p.m.; Outer Limits Lounge, 5507 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $10.

EXTC: XTC’s Terry Chambers and Friends 8 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $27.

Gino Vannelli 8 p.m.; Andiamo Celebrity Showroom, 7096 E. 14 Mile Rd., Warren; $32-$76.

Koe Wetzel w/ Dylan Wheeler 7:30 p.m.; Detroit Masonic Temple Library, 500 Temple St, Detroit; $34+.

Mark Farner’s American Band 8 p.m.; McMorran Place, 701 McMorran Blvd., Port Huron; $35+.

Masego 9 pm; Royal Oak Music Theatre, 318 W. Fourth St., Royal Oak; $32.50+.

New Edition: Legacy Tour with Keith Sweat & Guy 7:30 p.m.; Little Caesars Arena, 2645 Woodward Ave.,

Detroit fashion and hip-hop front and center

FASHION AND MUSIC have been two of Detroit’s biggest exports over the last several years. A quick click on your Instagram account and you’ll see NBA players rocking Octane or Wealthy walking through the tunnel before a game, and hip-hop artists like Jezzy and Rick Ross picking up a Ruggero jacket before they hit the stage.

Enter Darylynn Mumphord, a designer and promoter who’s had two feet firmly planted in both Detroit’s fashion and music scenes for the last 15 years. Both will be on display on Sunday at the “Dream’s Most Wanted Fashion Exhibit” event.

“A lot of people throw fashion shows, but they aren’t a mixture of our culture between streetwear and music,” Mumphord says. “Fashion and music go hand-in-hand. People try but they don’t do it with the right aesthetic.”

By “aesthetic,” Mumphord means the curation that goes into featuring new designers with those that are established and also supplementing that with the right hip-hop artists.

Detroit; $69.50+.

Sacred Concert: Samara Joy and Musique Noire 7 p.m.; Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, 18700 James Couzens Dr, Detroit; $20+. Seaforth 7 p.m.; Blind Pig, 208 S. First St., Ann Arbor; $16.

Static-X - Rise Of The Machine 2022 5 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $30.

Sumpp, White Bee, Hillbilly Knife Fight, Carmel Liburdi, JP from the HP 7 p.m.; The Loving

“The Detroit cultural experience [is] between artists and fashion,” she says. “So people can see the new brands that are coming out here. Some people throw fashion shows and it’s always the same designers, the same people, when we have a whole new generation of people that’s sewing clothes and making clothes.”

The designers and brands featured will be Arte de la moda, In Hous, Theres Only Us, Kameron Amir, Hvnlee, 7 pieces 7 ways, Thousand Island, Foreign Appetite, 1derdul, Visions Collection, Ruggero, Alexander Rose, and Reespecs.

The fashion show will also feature performances by Baby Money, Tay B, Sterl Gotti, Gameova1k, and 423tdot.

“This experience is definitely showing off all the talents we have here. The experience is the feel, like, ‘it’s a vibe’ is what people will be thinking,” she adds.

Dream Rich presents “Dream’s Most Wanted Fashion Exhibit” from 6-7 p.m. on Sunday, March 26 at 2000 Brooklyn St., Detroit. The show is produced by Code x Rosella, and sponsored by Hutch, Siempre, Viola, the Weedbar, and Moovin and Groovin. Tickets start at $40 and are available from eventbrite.com.

—Kahn Santori Davison

Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $10.

They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, Knifeplay, Thumper 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $15.

Megan Hamilton 9 p.m.; Tangent Gallery & Hastings Street Ballroom, 715 E. Milwaukee Ave., Detroit; $15 - $25.

Sunday, March 26

Live/Concert

Brit Floyd 7:30 p.m.; Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $34.50-$94.50.

Ross the Boss 5:30 & 6:30 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $20.

SiriusXM’s Hip-Hop Nation

Presents: Key Glock - Glockoma Tour 7 p.m.; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $39.50.

Spring Kickoff 5 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $10.

Sunday Jam Sessions Hosted by Sky Covington & Friends 8 p.m.; Woodbridge Pub, 5169 Trumbull St., Detroit; donation.

Tuesday, March 28

Live/Concert

Funky Rivertown Fest: Songwriters in the Round 7:30-10:30 p.m.; Riverside Arts Center, 76 N. Huron St., Ypsilanti; $20.

Inferious, Alukah, Monochromatic Black, Darkeater 6 & 7 p.m.; Sanctuary Detroit, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; $13.

Jake Wesley Rogers - Peace, Love & Pluto Tour 7 p.m.; The Shelter, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $25.

THEATER Performance

Meadow Brook Theatre Harry

Townsend’s Last Stand. $37. Wednesday, 8 p.m., Thursday, 8 p.m., Friday, 8 p.m., Saturday, 6 p.m. and Sunday, 2 & 6:30 p.m.

The Music Box Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Friday, 10:45 a.m., Saturday, 8 p.m. and Sunday, 3 p.m.

Planet Ant Theatre Stupor Magazine: A Celebration of Bad Ideas. A staged reading of Steve Hughes’ cult hit magazine. Planet Ant is pleased to present a two-night performance of the very best stories from a brand new book by Steve Hughes, featuring seven out-of-print issues from the longest-running zine in Detroit, written between the years of 2006–2007. $15-$20. Friday, 8-9:30 p.m. and Saturday, 8-9:30 p.m. Musical

Chicago the Musical (Touring)

Tuesday 8 p.m.; Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd, Detroit; $40-$120.

A Little Night Music Featuring the classic song “Send in the Clowns,” this Tony Award-winning musical presents infinite possibilities of new romances and second chances— in Pontiac’s beautiful Strand Theatre. Thursday, 8 p.m., Friday, 8 p.m., Saturday 2 & 8 p.m. and Sunday, 2 p.m.; Flagstar Strand Theatre for the Performing Arts, 12 N. Saginaw St., Pontiac; $22 general, $18 seniors, $12 students.

Local buzz

By Broccoli and Joe Zimmer

Detroit welcomes Baltimore music pioneer: While Detroit’s ghettotech music was taking shape in the early ’90s, similar underground offshoot movements were happening in East Coast cities like Baltimore and Newark. Heavily influenced by the late-’80s success of 2 Live Crew’s raunchy lyrical stylings, Baltimore Club music pumped up the tempo of hip-hop breakbeats and injected a healthy amount of hand claps and repeated vocal samples. The result is a fresh, fast, wholly unique genre of dance music, and DJ Technics is one of its longest-serving DJs. This B’more pioneer will be welcomed in Detroit this week at the first installment of DJ and producer dream beach’s event Sleep Olympics’ at its new home at Marble Bar on Friday, March 24. With incredible local support from some Local Buzz faves (AK, Beige, Deon Jamar), this is the spot to let your freak flag fly this weekend. Tickets available via Resident Advisor, or when doors open at 9 p.m.

—Joe

Nuxx Vomica touches down at UFO Factory: It feels like there has been a resurgence in the energy around Detroit’s goth/industrial / EBM scene lately, and one example of that is the upcoming visit from NYC’s Nuxx Vomica at UFO Factory

on Thursday, March 23. Presented by Sore in a Masterpiece, a local show promoter and screen printer, the show will also feature Clock Serum from Massachusetts along with local mainstays Comfort Cure and EXT EST, plus DJ sets from Textbeak and Noelle Solringen. If you’re looking for something dark and vibey on a Thursday evening, there’s no better place to be. For fans of Something Cold, Goth Night at City Club, and the upcoming Fixation showcase at Small’s (more to come on that soon).

—Broccoli

Punk trio announces new album: Local skittery punk band XV is releasing its new LP On The Creekbeds On The Thrones on April 7. Its 2019 self-titled debut record was met with wide acclaim thanks to the group’s improvisational and experimental approach: the band’s songs have the foundational elements of classic punk — driving basslines and drums with minimal guitar melodies — mixed with lo-fi, noisy vocals and injections of free jazz. The first taste of the new album “Funkyconomy” is streaming now via XV’s Bandcamp page, and the rest of the album will be available on the April 7 release date. It was recorded and mixed by DIY luminary Fred Thomas, a longtime collaborator of XV’s member’s individual projects as well. The vinyl version is available to pre-order now from Ginkgo Records, also via Bandcamp, and will likely be available in the usual local spots like

Hello Records and Peoples Records. If you like what you hear, grab a copy close to the release date, as we anticipate they may be snatched up quickly. The band is also planning a release show on April 22 at Detroit’s Spread Art, playing alongside Idle Ray (another Fred Thomas project) and DJ Kevin Boyer (of Tyvek fame).

—Joe

Apropos channels Chris Cornell: Like many of us, I’m on my phone way too much. Most of the time I find myself scrolling, flicking through the same photos and refreshing my apps hoping that something new has come up. But every once in a while, you see something that stops you in your tracks, something that you compulsively rewatch to the point where you lose track of time, yet it doesn’t feel like a waste of time. In fact, it gets better with every revisit. That is how I felt when I saw a post that Apropos did on his Instagram the other day. He has been dropping snippets of his recent visit with WDET’s Culture Shift, and the clip in particular was one where he covers “Like a Stone” by Audioslave. There are some uncanny similarities in how Apropos channels Chris Cornell’s original performance, but as always Apropos brings a pure, evocative energy that is uniquely his own. You can check out the timestamped clip via YouTube (it’s at the 20:29 mark), but the whole session is definitely worth a watch as well.

—Broccoli

Apropos.

COURTESY PHOTO

MUSIC

District 142 opens in Wyandotte Owners say to expect rock, country, tribute acts, and more

By Lee DeVito

Metro Detroit’s newest music venue, District 142, is a flurry of activity as it prepares to open its doors. Last Thursday, workers were on hand well into the evening, loading beer and mopping floors as the venue preps for a VIP party the next day and its grand opening to the public that Saturday.

District 142 is owned by Julie Law and Joshua Cade, who decided to open their own venue after their experiences in hospitality and event production in Wyandotte. Law says the venue will focus on primarily rock and country acts, the latter of which she says is a bit of a gap in the metro Detroit market.

“Country is hot right now, and there’s really not a lot of country venues, so we really want to focus on that,” she says. “I produce a lot of festivals in the Downriver area. I know what my fanbase likes and wants. It just made sense.”

With a capacity of 700, District 142 is on par with Detroit’s Magic Stick, bigger than a spot like El Club (400) and smaller than Saint Andrew’s Hall (1,000). She says a venue of that size should fit nicely in the metro Detroit music scene.

That was a happy accident, she says.

“Well, honestly, it’s what the building capacity would allow, but then afterwards I found out that it is a sweet spot,” she says. “There’s a lot of smaller venues — which everybody loves because of the

intimacy that it provides. There are a lot of 400 and below venues, and then you kind of jump to about 1,100 to 1,500 to even 2,000.”

Acts announced so far include nu metal band Saliva on Friday, March 24, metro Detroit rock acts Eva Under Fire and Kaleido on Saturday, April 1, country music artist Alex Williams on Thursday, April 20, Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad on Friday, May 12, New Country 93.1 Goose & Renee’s Secret Superstar Birthday Bash on Wednesday, June 14, and new wave band A Flock of Seagulls on Saturday, June 17, among others.

The first concert announced was the Eva Under Fire show. “They’re originally from the Downriver area,” Law says.

“They have recently been signed by a label and have been on national tours and big festivals, so they really wanted to do something close to home. … It just made sense for that to be our first first concert we’d announce.” That show quickly sold out, Law says.

Another pillar of District 142’s programming is tribute acts, or cover bands. The venue opened to the public with a show by The Four Horsemen, “the Album-Quality Metallica Tribute.”

“It’s a huge trend, bigger than I think many people know,” Law says of the phenomenon, adding, “That’s what people want. You don’t want to take away

from the original bands, but the reality is, they might be too [expensive] to see, or maybe you just like the music and you want to come and see it in your own backyard.” Other tribute acts booked so far include Jump, America’s Van Halen Experience on Friday, April 7, “yacht rock” band Yachtley Crew on Wednesday, May 24, and Strangelove, a Depeche Mode tribute on Saturday, June 17 opening for A Flock of Seagulls.

The venue will also host non-music events, including a vodka-tasting event called Vodka Social on Friday, April 28. It’s also available to book for weddings and other private events.

Law says the 15,000-square-foot building sat empty for 12 years when they acquired it.

“When we first took on this building, it was literally cinder blocks and a dirt floor,” she says. “There was no cement floor, no plumbing, sewer, electrical, heat, nothing. It was abandoned.”

She added, “I don’t think there was anybody crazy enough to take it on.”

In its past, the building had been a nightclub, a beer hall, and even a feather bowling alley.

“It’s had a lot of entertainment history to it, and that’s kind of what drew us to it as well,” Law says.

Law says she was charmed by the building’s skylight, which is opened

using a system of cranks and gears, and District 142 has leaned into an industrial architectural vibe. A mezzanine level was added, with a staircase built from repurposed wood from the rafters, as well as a “District 142” sign over the stage lit with Edison bulbs.

The layout wound up being perfect for what Law and Cade needed. “It was like it was meant to be a music venue,” she says. The venue has a relationship with live music production company Live Nation, which can also bring acts there if they need a room that size.

Law says District 142 will add to Wyandotte’s entertainment offerings.

“One thing about Wyandotte is that a lot of people don’t know about it,” she says. “They don’t understand that it’s kind of like the downtown of Downriver, if you will. It’s on the waterfront. There’s tons of bars and restaurants. And when you come here, it’s all free parking, which is also very unique.”

She adds, “You can come have dinner, come see live music, and afterwards, you can go to a local watering hole. I just think it’s a very unique, overlooked space, and that was part of the reason that we really wanted to put this here.”

District 142 is located at 142 Maple St., Wyandotte; district142live.com.

District 142 is owned by Julie Law and and Joshua Cade. JOE MAROON

FOOD

Ypsi’s Basil Babe is bangin’

As we ate at Thai restaurant Basil Babe, a friend commented that its massaman curry is the best version of the dish he has come across in the Ypsi-Ann Arbor area, and perhaps anywhere. I’ll go even higher in my praise — this is one of the better dishes I’ve dug into for a review this year. The coconut milk-based curry is a slightly sweet and savory Thai curry dish with some Middle Eastern fingerprints on it. Basil Babe’s take is practically silky, rich, and deep. Though its flavor is bold, the heat is bearable as it doesn’t seem to contain any of the chilis usually a part of Thai curries. Co-chef and owner Haluthai Inhmathong wouldn’t reveal any Basil Babe secrets, so we’ll speculate a bit on what’s in it based on how it’s often made. The dish’s deep red-orange broth can be composed of coconut milk, peanuts, palm sugar, star anise, and cinnamon, and, in many versions, fish sauce. A co-diner speculated that nutmeg might be what puts Basil Babe’s version over the top. For all the complexity and the fiery hue, the dish somehow remains simultaneously mellow, and here it arrives with carrots, onions, potatoes and chicken, which we added for $2. The hefty bowl is served aside jasmine rice.

By Tom Perkins

Regardless of what’s in it, it’s excellent. And though the massaman stood out, there’s plenty of depth, bright flavors, complexity, and execution across the menu at Basil Babe, a collaboration between Inhmathong and her mom, who opened and owned Ann Arbor’s Siam Square until 2018. They started popping up around Ann Arbor and Detroit for several years, and the new restaurant in Ypsilanti’s student neighborhood had a soft opening on Jan. 3 and never really turned off the open sign, Inhmathong says.

Together the team develops recipes that benefit from the mother’s traditional approach and the daughter’s modern updates on Thai recipes — they “met halfway,” Inhmathong says, and the tension pays off in plates like the OG stir fry, which arrives with crumbles of minced pork, garlic, thai bird’s eye chili, bell pepper, green bean, and thai basil aside jasmine rice. Its main feature is umami that at least partially owes to fish sauce in the stir fry’s sauce that’s enhanced with a bit of crisp heat from the birdseye, and both elements are doubled up with a side of prik nam pla, a mix of fish sauce and thai chili. The yolk in the fried egg we added contributed even more depth and richness.

Another stir fry arrived with cubes of salty pork belly with plenty of glorious pig fat. It’s drenched with a brown sauce anchored by oyster sauce that’s salty sauce and also contains plenty of umami. Onions, bell peppers, heavy garlic, and birdseye peppers are also in the mix, and the birdseye chilis again add a pleasant heat.

Among Basil Babe’s focuses are dumplings, and Inhmathong’s weekly menu offered two during our visit, both fried. The Mushi Modes are folded with bok choy, onions, and wood ear and shiitake mushrooms that were sauteed in sesame oil, garlic, and ginger, and which provide an earthy, meaty element. That’s topped with a sweet and spicy chili sauce, cilantro, and crispy fried shallots for flavorful accents and textural contrast. The other dumpling option was similar, but filled with spicy pork, birdseye chili, garlic, and thai basil mix — the garlic is heavy, and it’s essentially the OG stir fry version of the dumpling.

Three chicken skewers flavored with a coconut-curry sauce that’s heavy on turmeric comprise the satay gai. The sweet and bright vinegar with little triangles of cucumbers and diced red onion really made the dish pop.

We didn’t get into noodle dishes like

Basil Babe

701 W. Cross St., Ypsilanti 734-487-4000 basil-babe.com

Entrees $12-$15 Wheelchair accessible

pad thai or desserts, like coconut pandan pudding cups and cocosquash made with kabocha squash and tapioca pearls in a coconut sauce. Drinks include standard pops and Thai coffee and iced tea, and as soon as a liquor license transfer goes through, expect some beer and Asian cocktails.

InhmathongIts created a whole Instagram-friendly vibe that people these days love. The service process is a bit awkward as one is sat and must pull up a menu on the phone before placing an order with a host, which may require standing in a line one previously stood in while waiting to be sat. Try to get a table instead of a booth, as the booths are tight. But these are very minor complaints in the bigger picture, and Basil Babe adds to a growing roster of restaurants that put Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township among the more interesting places to dine in southeast Michigan.

Curry at Basil Babe. TOM PERKINS

EMPLOYMENT

Automation Engineer, Plastic Omnium Auto Inergy, Troy, MI. Engr, dvlp, test, release, & implement current & new automation controls for semi-automated & automated

programable logic controller (PLC)-based machines & HMIs, incl. finishing centers, vertical cooling towers, blow molding machines, post-cooling machines, fastening eqpmt, robotics for material handling eqpmt, conveyors (incl. automated guided carts), error proofing syss, & plant floor networks, using SolidWorks tool for HW & TIA Portal & Studio5000 tools for SW, to support high volume production of psgr vehicle fuel tanks. Dvlp, improve & release SW-based verification functions to self-assess & verify product qlty according to Plastic Omnium product specs, International

Organization for Standardization Technical Specification 16949 (Automotive Industry), & International Automotive Task Force standards, in penetrating & nonpenetrating welding processes, predictive & adaptive welding, cutting process, & helium leak testing process, utilizing PFMEA results to detect machine faults that affect product & compromise qlty in eqpmt at Plastic Omnium N.A. (incl. Adrian, Anderson, Fairfax, Huron, & Smyrna) Plants. Reqrd travel to 8 mfg plants in U.S. (5) & Mexico (3) to commission new line machinery, install new automated mfg processes, update automated eqpmt SW & HW, & troubleshoot

blow molder machine failures, up to 12 wks P/A (equal to ~23% annual travel).

Bachelor, Mechatronics, Electronics, Electrical Engrg, or related. 24 mos exp as Engineer or related, dvlpg or implementing new automation controls PLC-based machines & HMIs, incl. finishing centers, blow molding machines, & post-cooling machines, using TIA Portal tool for SW, to support high volume production of psgr vehicle cmpt, or related. Mail resume to Ref#31215-108, POAI, Human Resources, 2710 Bellingham Dr., Troy, MI 48083.

EMPLOYMENT

Controls Design Engineer, Milford, MI, General Motors. Engr, define, dvlp, implement & validate math-based & physicsbased torque safety monitor algorithms to ensure compliance w/ ISO26262 Road Vehicles

Functional Safety & reqmts, for Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) & Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) in ECM & embedded Hybrid Control Processor for global HEV & BEV psgr vehicles, using MATLAB & Stateflow models, Embedded C prgrmg language, & Git, Gerrit, Jenkins, Artifactory, ETAS INCA & Eclipse IDE tools, in SAFe methodology, for current & future model yr vehicle prgrms, & global markets (N.A., China, S.A., & RoW). Verify & test algorithms in SIL & HIL environs using MATLAB, GMSim, & dSPACE Control Desk tools & in vehicle using ETAS INCA & ETAS MDA tools. Use IBM Rational DOORS SW to capture & analyze Automotive Safety Integrity Level rated sys reqmts for torque safety features. Master, Mechanical, Automotive, Electrical Engrg, or related. 12 mos exp as Engineer, dvlpg & validating torque safety monitor algorithms to ensure compliance w/ ISO26262 Road Vehicles Functional Safety & reqmts, for BEV, using MATLAB & Stateflow models, Embedded C prgrmg language, & ETAS INCA tool, or related. Mail resume to Ref#30960-22209, GM Global Mobility, 300 Renaissance Center, MC:482-C32-C66, Detroit, MI 48265.

EMPLOYMENT

Software Engineer - Vehicle Motion Embedded Controls (VMEC), Milford, MI, General Motors. Define, design, & implement embedded SW sys in Hybrid Electric Vehicle & Battery Electric Vehicle Hybrid Operating Strategy, incl. Motor Control Limitation Ring & Propulsion Behavior Coordination Ring, in Embedded C & C++ prgrmg languages, using MATLAB, Simulink & Stateflow modeling tools, & Embedded Coder auto generator, using Git, Gerrit, Jenkins, Eclipse IDE, & IBM RTC tools, following MISRA CERT C standards, compliant w/ Automotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR) standards, & GM SW dvlpmt process. Prepare Sys Design Docs to capture functionality of specific ring & different SW features along w/ high level interfaces. Utilize automated test tools such as CppUTest & GMSIM, to verify functionality at Function, Controller & Sys level. Debug embedded ECU SW to determine root causes by analyzing in-vehicle communication ntwk data logs from CAN, using ETAS Measure Data Analyzer, & dvlp corrective actions for issues raised by product teams through Problem Resolution & Tracking Sys. Bachelor, Mechanical, Automotive, Electrical, Power, Aerospace Engrg, or related. 24 mos exp as Engineer, designing or implementing embedded sys in psgr vehicle, in Embedded C & C++ prgrmg languages, using MATLAB & Simulink tools, compliant w/ AUTOSAR standards, or related. Mail resume to Ref#39498, GM Global Mobility, 300 Renaissance Center, MC:482-C32-C66, Detroit, MI 48265.

EMPLOYMENT

Robert Bosch Automotive Steering LLC seeks Software Development Engineer (Multiple Positions) in Plymouth, MI.

REQS: Bach dgr or frgn eq, in Comp Science, Computer Engg, Electrical Engg, Electronic Engg or rel fld, +3 yrs prof exp in auto embedded SW devel. Remote Work May Be Permitted. Apply via https://www.bosch.us/careers/, search Software Development Engineer / REF185929Y

FOOD

Guy Fieri’s Chicken Guy! restaurant chain is coming to Michigan

GUY FIERI, THE spikey-haired “Mayor of Flavortown” known for eating his way across the country on his Food Network reality TV show Diners, DriveIns and Dives, will soon have a more permanent presence in Michigan.

On Tuesday, Fieri announced that he’s bringing his Chicken Guy! chain of fastcasual restaurants to metro Detroit. The first is slated to open on April 1 at 30130 Plymouth Rd., Livonia, with a total of 20 restaurants planned for the Detroit area in the coming years.

“The people of The Motor City have spoken… I’m bringin’ my real deal chicken tenders, sandwiches, and shakes to Livonia,” Fieri said in a statement. “From shooting DDD to taking part

in the Woodward Dream Cruise, the Detroit area has always been a go-to for me, so I’m stoked for everyone to give us a try. See ya there!”

The restaurants come from a partnership with The Tomey Group, a Farmington Hills-based restaurant group that opened its first Jimmy John’s location in 2003 and now owns and operates more than 50 Jimmy John’s locations throughout Southeast Michigan, making them the brand’s third-largest franchise owner.

“We are excited to announce the opening of the first Chicken Guy! in Michigan and partner with one of our favorite chefs and TV personalities, Guy Fieri,” said The Tomey Group CEO Anthony Tomey. “The food and variety of

sauces is made with the expertise from Guy, that you can only imagine how delicious the food is. This is just the first location of many, as we have plans to expand to all over Southeast Michigan.”

The new deal makes The Tomey Group Chicken Guy!’s largest franchise partner.

The Tomey Group partners are also co-owners for brands like 8 Mile Vodka and the Born in Detroit apparel brand.

The Chicken Guy! menu includes

chicken sandwiches, tenders, and salads, with 22 signature sauces. Desserts include DDD-worthy fare like Triple Double Ice Cream Treat (triple chocolate and double-mint), or the Cinnamon Apple (described as “a heaping cup of vanilla soft serve ice cream smothered in Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Apple Jacks cereal”).

More information is available at chickenguy.com.

—Lee DeVito

Opinion: We need to have a come to Jesus moment about Lent

EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT Christian, you may be aware that it’s currently Lent, a religious fasting observance practiced ahead of Easter by Christians of all denominations, and especially Catholics. The tradition stems from a Biblical tale in which Jesus is said to have spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert, fasting, praying, and avoiding the temptations of Satan.

Since we’re only human, the Lent season for many kicks off with what is intended to be a final round of debauchery to blow off steam before fasting; Mardis Gras celebrations in places like New Orleans and St. Louis, and, thanks to our Polish friends here in metro Detroit, Fat Tuesday, where we indulge in delicious yet artery-clogging paczki. I was raised in a loose Roman Catholic home, and we were taught to give up meat on Fridays during Lent (with the exception of fish) and also to make a Lenten sacrifice by abstaining from some other vice for the duration of the season. For us kids, it was usually silly stuff like eating candy, playing video games, or swearing.

I consider myself a bit of a “cultural Catholic” now, and while I no longer go to Mass or even identify as a Christian, I always appreciated the rituals, art, and holidays of the Catholic Church — even Lent. I saw the value in exercising

self-discipline, and while I don’t really participate anymore, I have in the past as an adult given up things like alcohol or sweets to use the season to try and instill better habits beyond the 40 days and 40 nights. I also have friends who participate in the Muslim Ramadan fast for similar reasons.

That’s why I’m sitting at my desk right now, sifting through Lent-related press releases, bemused by all of the ways that businesses are trying to capitalize on what is supposed to be a solemn season of self-reflection.

For example, Olga’s Kitchen framed its new collaboration with fellow metro Detroit-based brand McClure’s Pickles, a twist on a Louisiana-style Po’Boy sandwich, as an option for those practicing Lent, announcing the new menu item on Fat Tuesday ($9.99). OK, fine. I can get behind that one. A cursory search in my email inbox for the word “Lent” reveals a smattering of other seafoodrelated promotions: fish and chips at upscale Hazel’s in Birmingham ($23), or “Lobster Amore,” North Atlantic coldwater lobster tail with sides, from local Italian chain Andiamo ($49.95).

But the email that stopped me in my tracks and made me question my faith in… well, just about everything… was a promotion for “Caviar Dishes This Lenten Season” from Joe Muer Seafood.

“For a limited time only, Joe Muer Bloomfield Hills is offering their guests three tiers of caviar options to enhance their dining experience this Lenten season,” it reads. Well, talk about a “Holy trinity!”

According to the press release, “All caviar dishes are served on ice with traditional garnish of chopped egg white & yolk, fresh chives, minced chives, and creme fraiche with warm blinis.” The include the “Tradition Prestige” ($95), the “Siberian Classic” ($150), and the “Oscietra Royal” ($275), described as “Rich, nutty, creamy flavors of pear, hazelnut and butter, with a nose of nuts and sea urchin.”

My brothers in Christ… what are we doing. We kinda-Catholics have completely lost the plot.

I’m admittedly quickly skimming through Google here, but apparently the Catholic tradition of eating fish during Lent followed an earlier papal ban prohibiting eating “flesh, meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, and eggs.” For whatever reason, meat from warmblooded animals was considered off-limits, while coldblooded animals like fish were considered fair game. A persistent theory alleges that even back in those days, it was business interests driving Lent habits via a shady deal with the Church to prop up

the Italian fish industry. (This telling of Lent history has been deemed “fishy” by NPR.) I’m still skimming Google, but it seems in reality, eating fish was probably favored during Lent because medieval peasants were already basically fasting anyway and they needed something substantial to eat, and fish could be more easily preserved via curing. And to be sure, businesses cashing in on Lent is hardly anything new: today I learned that an enterprising McDonald’s franchise owner in Cincinnati invented the Filet-O-Fish sandwich in the 1960s as a way to make up for declining hamburger sales during Lent.

Look, I’m in no way interested in being a “Catholicism Cop” here. People are free to practice religion — or not practice religion — however they please. If they want to “observe Lent” by “eating $275 caviar,” go for it. It’s not them I take issue with. What I can’t stand is the way that every American holiday, whether Lent or Halloween or whatever, becomes hollowed of any and all meaning and turns into just another excuse to buy stuff. I take issue with those who claim they’re doing one thing, but really doing another. Didn’t Jesus have something to say about those who “make my Father’s house a house of merchandise?”

—Lee DeVito

COURTESY PHOTO

Jones Soda has THC-infused drinks called ‘Mary Jones’

NOSTALGIC CRAFT SOFT drink brand Jones Soda has added a special ingredient to its newest line of drinks: THC.

The brand has a line of cannabisinfused beverages dubbed “Mary Jones.” You know, in case you’ve ever thought, “Boy I wish I could have some weed in my pop.”

This Michigan company offers cannabis subscription boxes delivered to your door

WALKING INTO A cannabis dispensary can be overwhelming.

A Michigan-based company is poised to make the process easier and more educational with a monthly cannabis subscription club that delivers a curated box of products to your front door.

HighHello began its subscription service in metro Detroit last month. The company hopes to branch out to other areas of the state in the future.

For $100 a month, you get a box packed with a variety of flower, edibles, concentrates, and vape cartridges, along with educational material and a 15-minute virtual meeting with a bud tender. Smaller boxes are available for $75 if you prefer just flower, edibles, or concentrates.

Metro Times decided to try a $100 box, and we were impressed with the

quality, quantity, and variety of products.

We received three eighth-of-anounce packages of premium flower, two pre-rolls, a vape cartridge, THC-infused milk chocolate and Mackinac Island fudge, two fast-acting THC pills, and a lighter. It was more than enough cannabis to last a month.

Each product came with educational material.

To subscribe, see HighHello’s website. You can cancel your subscription at any time.

“There are so many new products in dispensaries all the time,” Vadim Shiglik, co-founder of HighHello, tells Metro Times. “It can be overwhelming for people. We want to lend some kind of tool for navigating those waters.”

HighHello partners with cannabis

New cured resin concentrate by Cheech Marin hits the market

TWO INDEPENDENT CANNABIS companies in Michigan have banded together to create a limited-batch cured resin concentrate.

Only 14,000 grams of “Harbor Farmz + Cheech’s Stash” concentrate will be available beginning this week in dispensaries that carry Cheech’s Stash, a brand created by stoner actor Cheech Marin.

Aardvark Industrees, of Lansing, launched Cheech’s Stash in Michigan last summer and provided the can-

nabis trim for the extract.

Harbor Farmz, of Three Rivers, is known for processing terpene-rich concentrates.

“It’s a small batch release,” Shane Martin, director of Harbor Farmz retail, said in a statement Thursday. “When it’s gone it’s gone — but if people like it, which we think they will — we’ll work with Aardvark Industrees to develop something long-term.”

Curing resin is a slow process that removes the plant’s moisture to make

STEVE NEAVLING

brands to offer new products every month. In an industry that is growing so quickly, it can be difficult for brands to stand out.

“It’s so hard to run a business, create a quality product, and advertise in ways that are not traditional,” Shiglik says. “This is an additional tool for them to advertise their brand and connect with the customer.”

Shiglik says the box is fun because it’s different every month and includes products that a customer might not usually buy.

“We are always mixing it up” he says. “There is always enough to share with friends. You get to try awesome products from a variety of companies and learn about them while you do it at a price that makes you feel comfortable.”

—Steve Neavling

a smooth and potent product. The cured resin helps preserve terpenes and makes the concentrate more flavorful.

“Our flower terpenes have been so surprising — we were excited to see how it’d translate to concentrate,” Hilary Dulany, co-owner of Aadvark Industrees, said.

“As small, independent businesses, our strengths play well together and should positively impact this market category. We’ve put a lot of thought into this product and believe people will appreciate the outcome,” Dulany added.

—Steve Neavling

Mary Jones will be available at Michigan dispensaries this summer with drinks that have either 10mg or 100mg of THC, along with a line of infused syrups.

The 10mg drinks are sold in single 12 oz. bottles or four-packs while the whopping 100 mg drinks come in 16 oz. tall boy cans that are resealable and “child-resistant” so you can drink it over a few sittings. The brand’s THC-infused syrups also contain 100mg of THC and can be used as a cocktail mixer, drizzled over desserts, or used in other recipes.

Supposedly, the drinks “taste exactly like the mainline Jones craft sodas” in flavors like Root Beer, Berry Lemonade, Green Apple, and Orange & Cream.

Mary Jones was first launched in California last June and will soon be sold in Nevada and Washington in addition to Michigan. Jones Soda is planning to eventually roll out Mary Jones nationally in all recreational cannabis markets.

“As the first branded soda company to expand into the cannabis space, we have unique advantages that include 26 years of brand recognition, deep flavor science expertise, and an edgy brand personality that’s a perfect fit for the canna culture,” Jones Soda Company president and CEO Mark Murray said in a press release. “These attributes have already helped turn Mary Jones into California’s top infused carbonated beverage and the state’s fastest-growing cannabis brand, and we fully expect similar success in Washington, Michigan, Nevada, and every other market we enter.”

Maxxx Labs will be handling the manufacturing and distribution of Mary Jones in Michigan.

Exact locations where you can find Mary Jones will be posted on gomaryjones.com closer to its Michigan release.

Jones Soda was founded in 1995 in Canada.

—Randiah Camille Green

CULTURE

Artist of the week

Tylonn J. Sawyer brings ‘Dark Matter’ to N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art

By Randiah Camille Green

Known but unseen, dark matter permeates every corner of the cosmos. Scientists believe this mysterious material makes up more than 80% of all matter in the universe, though they can’t see it.

For Tylonn J. Sawyer, dark matter is a metaphor for African American contributions to art and culture.

“Often our contributions are sort of redacted from the history of those things,” Sawyer tells Metro Times. “The works in the show address a variety of issues from art history to water crises in major black cities.”

Dark Matter is the title of Sawyer’s latest exhibition at Detroit’s N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art. It’s the first time he’s exhibited in his hometown in nearly a year.

The show includes paintings the

artist has never shown in Detroit before along with some new work. It asks the viewer to imagine what a reality without institutionalized racism might look like for African Americans.

“What’s it like to be free of all the chaos and the racism and the B.S. and to just exist in this blissful state?” he asks. “It’s a question that warrants using your imagination to really think about what those types of spaces would be, divorced from the history that’s weighted with that. With the works in this show, we find ourselves sort of on the precipice of that.”

In contemplating this alternate reality, one of his pieces combines the imagery of a contemporary Black woman with regal imagery like Diego Velázquez’s painting of María Teresa.

A pair of paintings called “Turf War”

juxtapose each other. One shows Black figures covering their faces with masks of historic white artists like Jackson Pollock and Joan Mitchell on one side. On the other side, the subjects hold masks of Black artists like Jacob Lawrence and Faith Ringo.

“During the same period that these white artists were being championed and sort of shaping what we see contemporary art to be, Black artists were making notable contributions,” Sawyer explains. “But because of racism at the time, the Black artists in no way shape, or form really got the notoriety that the white artists did. It’s weird now to think about because Black art is really hot in the art world.”

He adds, “It’s also a commentary on my education because I went to Eastern Michigan University, and then I went to the New York Academy of Art, and the Royal Academy of Art in London and it wasn’t until I became a full-time practicing artist myself that I started to realize how ignorant I was to the contributions of these Black artists.”

Overall, Sawyer says he just wants to show a multifaceted reality of Blackness which includes joy and beauty as much as it does sadness.

“The Black experience is a multivalent one,” he says. “It’s not just police brutality and sadness. It’s not just water shut-offs or floods. It’s also education. It’s also beauty and it’s also aspiration. It’s also having a critical dialogue with history and the future in and of itself. Oftentimes, in the media, we see a very flat interpretation of what Blackness can look like and I hope the show, in a very cohesive way, can make people see the myriad of ways blackness can be beautiful.”

Where to see his work: Dark Matter opens at N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art through June 19; 52 E. Forest Ave., Detroit; 313-831-8700; nnamdicenter.org.

Got someone in mind you think deserves the spotlight? Hit us up at arts@ metrotimes.com.

Tylonn J. Sawyer.

JEFF CANCELOSI

“Royal II” by Tylonn J. Sawyer COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

CULTURE

Savage Love

Size Peace

By Dan Savage

leting my profile, because I’m so horribly ashamed of how I look. I used to be young! And hot! And pretty! And hot girl Amy wanted to fuck me! Constantly! I don’t want to get back together with Amy, not at all, but I miss the kind of life-altering sex she and I used to have when my body was at its best.

visit her website ellechase.com. Chase is offering readers of Savage Love 15% off a session or package if you use the code SAVAGE.

:

Q I’m a 41-year-old lesbian. Back when I was 26, I weighed 125 pounds and had a girlfriend. Sex with “Amy” was mind-blowing. Amy was exactly my type from head to toe, and she had more experience than me, so she really opened me up sexually. Our physical chemistry was off the charts. Unfortunately, Amy and I broke up (dysfunctional relationship issues), and then I moved to the West Coast. Fast-forward to age 31. I weighed 165 pounds, but I carried it well. Then I fell into a severe depression and had to live with my parents for a while. Amy lived about two hours away from me at that time. She’d seen me at my new weight and was still interested in me. Amy called me every night for months. After months of talking, we decided to meet up in person. However, because of depression meds and “mom’s cooking” and whatever else, I was approximately 200 pounds when we finally met up. Amy and I started sleeping together again, but it was obvious that she wasn’t into me physically anymore. The insanely good sex we once had together never returned. Within a few months she told me she was attracted to other people, and we ended things.

I want to be very, very clear when I say that I do not blame Amy at all for losing attraction to me due to my weight gain. Going from 125 to 200 within five years is an extreme amount of weight gain. But the experience broke my heart and I have not had sex or even kissed anyone since. That’s nine years of celibacy. I was (and am) deeply ashamed of my body. I continued to receive treatment for depression — lots of different psych meds, lots of group and individual therapy, etc., and my mental health has slowly but steadily improved but I also gained more weight — and I lost every last drop of self-acceptance about my body. I went from loving my body, to being OK with it, to being dumped for it, to becoming severely obese. I finally started seeing a weight loss doctor last year and have begun to slowly lose some of the weight — I’m down to 230 pounds from my 275 max — and I REALLY want to have sex again, but I can’t even stay on dating sites for more than a few days before de-

How do I even begin trying to start dating and having sex again when I was dumped for getting fat and have such self-loathing and shame about my body?

—Fat Middle-Aged Celibate Lesbo

: A “To begin to work on accepting our bodies it’s essential to get to the core of the issue,” said Elle Chase, a certified sexologist, sex, relationship, and body-image coach, and the author of Curvy Girl Sex: 101 Body-Positive Sex Positions to Empower Your Sex Life.

And at the core of your issue, FMACL, you’re not going to find your weight gain or the trauma of being dumped by hot girl Amy. No, according to Chase, your issues go much deeper, FMACL, and they’re cultural, not individual.

“From the day we are born, we are inundated with made-up, everchanging standards for beauty and our bodies,” said Chase. “These standards are rooted in systems of oppression like patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. These man-made ideas of attractiveness and desirability distort, skew, and infect our perception and opinion of ourselves — and others — convincing us that we must look a certain way in order to be sexually desirable or deserving. But that’s a lie!”

Because sexual attraction is highly subjective — there are lots of different people out there, FMACL, and different people find different bodies and different body types and different personalities attractive.

“It’s just like art,” said Chase. “We could be looking at the same painting and have two very different feelings or opinions about it. And neither of us is wrong.”

Differing tastes in art may be easy for us to wrap our heads around. We’re not going to take it personally when a friend — or a stranger on a dating app — disagrees with us about pointillism or surrealism or cubism. The stakes are higher when we’re the painting someone else thinks is beautiful (when we don’t feel beautiful) or doesn’t feel is beautiful (when we wish they would).

“When what you see in the mirror doesn’t match that artificial standard it’s hard for your brain to see you as the inherently sexually desirable human that you are,” said Chase. “Your brain becomes an unreliable narrator trying to protect you from the pain of rejection by telling you that you aren’t attractive or sexually desirable enough to deserve a sex life.”

So, how does one — how do you — dismantle this, er, system of selfoppression?

“Here’s a ‘CliffsNotes’ version with some hopefully useful tips,” said Chase. “FMACL needs to rewire her brain by disrupting negative self-talk patterns. If she hates what she looks like and her inner dialog is endorsing [that self-hatred], she should acknowledge her feelings — if you feel like crap, you feel like crap, and it’s important to validate that — and then say something true but neutral to herself. Something like, ‘This is what my body looks like today,’ or, ‘I feel ugly, but feelings aren’t facts.’ My favorite mantra: ‘What I think of my body is none of my business.’ Don’t be discouraged. I know it’s challenging but it’s a lifelong practice that I myself continue to do daily.”

As for dating — as for putting yourself out there on a dating app and staying out there — Chase advises lowering the stakes for now.

“FMACL can the pressure off herself for now by just dating for practice,” said Chase. “The goal is not to get laid or find a new partner, but to grow more at ease and confident with herself. Notice how it feels to go out with people and have conversations, share experiences, even flirt. She should pay attention to how she’s feeling rather than what she assumes her date is feeling. Prioritize her own joy, comfort, and desires over all else right now — she deserves nothing less.”

To learn more about Elle Chase, her work, and the services she provides,

: Q This is a question I should have asked you ten years ago! I’m a 68-yearold GWM, who was sexually assaulted by my (also gay) medical provider, multiple times, until I finally distanced myself from him both socially and professionally. I vacillated for several years whether or not I should report him, but never did. Recently, I discovered that he apparently committed suicide after another patient accused him of multiple sexual assaults. I contacted this man’s attorneys, and they are moving forward with a lawsuit against the clinic and the provider’s estate. At their request, I have agreed to provide a deposition. They have also suggested that I consider filing a suit. I am a happily married man, retired, and living in Europe. Should I just let all this go? Or should I jump into the fire with a lawsuit?

—Decline Or Challenge

: A Agreeing to be deposed — or agreeing to file an affidavit — in support of the other patient known to have been assaulted by your former medical provider… that’s no small thing. So, even if you decide not to file a lawsuit yourself, DOC, you aren’t just letting this go. You’re doing something meaningful and significant; you’re helping another victim get the justice and restitution he feels he needs and helping to hold the clinic where you, this man, and most likely other men were sexually assaulted.

So, the question isn’t, “Am I going to sit this out?”, as you aren’t sitting this out. The question instead is, “Am I going to file a lawsuit of my own?” And the answer to that question… well, that’s not an answer I can provide you with, DOC. Because the answer depends on what you need, DOC, to feel whole. If you don’t want the hassle and don’t need a settlement, you aren’t obligated to get more involved than you have already — and, again, agreeing to be deposed (by both sides) in a case like this is no small thing. Justice is being done, institutions are being held accountable, and you’re helping. If you want to file a lawsuit of your own, you should. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.

CULTURE Free Will Astrology

ARIES: March 21 – April 19

If we were to choose one person to illustrate the symbolic power of astrology, it might be Aries financier and investment banker J. P. Morgan (1837–1913). His astrological chart strongly suggested he would be one of the richest people of his era. The sun, Mercury, Pluto, and Venus were in Aries in his astrological house of finances. Those four heavenly bodies were trine to Jupiter and Mars in Leo in the house of work. Further, sun, Mercury, Pluto, and Venus formed a virtuoso “Finger of God” aspect with Saturn in Scorpio and the moon in Virgo. Anyway, Aries, the financial omens for you right now aren’t as favorable as they always were for J. P. Morgan — but they are pretty auspicious. Venus, Uranus, and the north node of the moon are in your house of finances, to be joined for a bit by the moon itself in the coming days. My advice: Trust your intuition about money. Seek inspiration about your finances.

TAURUS: April 20 – May 20

“The only thing new in the world,” said former U.S. President Harry Truman, “is the history you don’t know.” Luckily for all of us, researchers

have been growing increasingly skilled in unearthing buried stories. Three examples: 1. Before the U.S. Civil War, six Black Americans escaped slavery and became millionaires. (Check out the book Black Fortunes by Shomari Wills.) 2. Over 10,000 women secretly worked as code-breakers in World War II, shortening the war and saving many lives. 3. Four Black women mathematicians played a major role in NASA’s early efforts to launch people into space. Dear Taurus, I invite you to enjoy this kind of work in the coming weeks. It’s an excellent time to dig up the history you don’t know — about yourself, your family, and the important figures in your life.

GEMINI: May 21 – June 20

Since you’re at the height of the Party Hearty Season, I’ll offer two bits of advice about how to collect the greatest benefits. First, ex-basketball star Dennis Rodman says that mental preparation is the key to effective partying. He suggests we visualize the pleasurable events we want to experience. We should meditate on how much alcohol and drugs we will imbibe, how uninhibited we’ll allow ourselves to be, and how close we can get to vomiting from intoxication without actually vomiting. But wait! Here’s an alternative approach to partying, adapted from Sufi poet Rumi: “The golden hour has secrets to reveal. Be alert for merriment. Be greedy for glee. With your antic companions, explore the frontiers of conviviality. Go in quest of jubilation’s mysterious blessings. Be bold. Revere revelry.”

CANCER: June 21 – July 22

I believe it would benefit our society, if everyone after high school had to do at least a year in the military or peace corps, a year in the service industry or trades and six months of truck driving… it’s just a suggestion.

3-2AM EVERYDAY

If you have been holding yourself back or keeping your expectations low, please STOP! According to my analysis, you have a mandate to unleash your full glory and your highest competence. I invite you to choose as your motto whichever of the following inspires you most: raise the bar, up your game, boost your standards, pump up the volume, vault to a higher octave, climb to the next rung on the ladder, make the quantum leap, and put your ass and assets on the line.

LEO: July 23 – August 22

According to an ad I saw for a luxury automobile, you should enjoy the following adventures in the course of your lifetime: Ride the rapids on the Snake River in Idaho, stand on the Great Wall of China, see an opera at La Scala in Milan, watch the sunrise over the ruins of Machu Picchu, go paragliding over Japan’s Asagiri highland plateau with Mount Fuji in view, and visit the pink flamingos, black bulls, and

white horses in France›s Camargue Nature Reserve. The coming weeks would be a favorable time for you to seek experiences like those, Leo. If that›s not possible, do the next best things. Like what? Get your mind blown and your heart thrilled closer to home by a holy sanctuary, natural wonder, marvelous work of art — or all the above.

VIRGO: August 23 – Sept. 22

It’s an excellent time to shed the dull, draining parts of your life story. I urge you to bid a crisp goodbye to your burdensome memories. If there are pesky ghosts hanging around from the ancient past, buy them a one-way ticket to a place far away from you. It’s OK to feel poignant. OK to entertain any sadness and regret that well up within you. Allowing yourself to fully experience these feelings will help you be as bold and decisive as you need to be to graduate from the old days and old ways.

LIBRA: Sept. 23 – Oct. 22

Your higher self has authorized you to become impatient with the evolution of togetherness. You have God’s permission to feel a modicum of dissatisfaction with your collaborative ventures — and wish they might be richer and more captivating than they are now. Here’s the cosmic plan: This creative irritation will motivate you to implement enhancements. You will take imaginative action to boost the energy and synergy of your alliances. Hungry for more engaging intimacy, you will do what’s required to foster greater closeness and mutual empathy.

SCORPIO: Oct. 23 – Nov. 21:

Scorpio poet Richard Jackson writes, “The world is a nest of absences. Every once in a while, someone comes along to fill the gaps.” I will add a crucial caveat to his statement: No one person can fill all the gaps. At best, a beloved ally may fill one or two. It’s just not possible for anyone to be a shining savior who fixes every single absence. If we delusionally believe there is such a hero, we will distort or miss the partial grace they can actually provide. So here’s my advice, Scorpio: Celebrate and reward a redeemer who has the power to fill one or two of your gaps.

By Rob Brezsny

SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22 – Dec. 21

Poet E. E. Cummings wrote, “May my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple.” That›s what I hope and predict for you during the next three weeks. The astrological omens suggest you will be at the height of your powers of playful exploration. Several long-term rhythms are converging to make you extra flexible and resilient and creative as you seek the resources and influences that your soul delights in. Here’s your secret code phrase: higher love

CAPRICORN: Dec. 22 – Jan. 19

Let’s hypothesize that there are two ways to further your relaxation: either in healthy or not-so-healthy ways — by seeking experiences that promote your long-term well-being or by indulging in temporary fixes that sap your vitality. I will ask you to meditate on this question. Then I will encourage you to spend the next three weeks avoiding and shedding any relaxation strategies that diminish you as you focus on and celebrate the relaxation methods that uplift, inspire, and motivate you.

AQUARIUS: Jan. 20 – Feb. 18

Please don’t expect people to guess what you need. Don’t assume they have telepathic powers that enable them to tune in to your thoughts and feelings. Instead, be specific and straightforward as you precisely name your desires. For example, say or write to an intense ally, “I want to explore ticklish areas with you between 7 and 9 on Friday night.” Or approach a person with whom you need to forge a compromise and spell out the circumstances under which you will feel most open-minded and openhearted. P.S.: Don’t you dare hide your truth or lie about what you consider meaningful.

PISCES: Feb.19 – March 20

Piscean writer Jack Kerouac feared he had meager power to capture the wonderful things that came his way. He compared his frustration with “finding a river of gold when I haven’t even got a cup to save a cupful. All I’ve got is a thimble.” Most of us have felt that way. That’s the bad news. The good news, Pisces, is that in the coming weeks, you will have extra skill at gathering in the goodness and blessings flowing in your vicinity. I suspect you will have the equivalent of three buckets to collect the liquid gold.

Homework: Name one thing about your life you can’t change and one thing you can change.

JAMES NOELLERT

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F/T 9:00 am to 5:00 pm 40hrs/wk. US or Foreign Bachelor’s degree in Business Adminstration, Management. Send resume to G. Camano, Four Seasons Nursing Center of Westland, 8365 Newburgh Rd., Westland, Ml 48185.

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