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In a city flush with poets and performers, the New Detroit/Old Detroit discussion was destined to get an anthem with a street beat.
That destiny is upheld by Chace "Mic Write" Morris, a lifelong Detroiter whose new song and locally produced video draws national attention.
Chace "Mic Write" Morris: "I was down in Midtown when it was not as bustling as it is now." (Facebook photos)
An article in Mother Jones magazine by former Detroit teacher Allie Gross showcases the hip-hop video and frames Morris as a current affairs balladeer:
As city leaders — and billionaires — structure Detroit's future, there has been an emphasis on words like "new," "revitalization," "renaissance" and "regrowth," but very little talk about the systemic issues that led to the city's decline. . . .
These contradictions are the subject of "H.O.M.E.S.," the latest song by 30-year-old Detroit hip-hop artist Mic Write, in collaboration with Doss the Artist, another local rapper. It's an anthem of city pride that challenges the notion of their town's corporate revitalization.
"My city, my block, my street. Why pity my stock? I eat. I read, I learn, I care. I think your data is obsolete. Look, Nigga this that miss me with your savior complex," he raps in the first verse.
H.O.M.E.S. stands for Heaven Of My Everyday Surroundings, its creator explains.
The slick three-and-a-half-minute video is shot and produced by Benjamin J. Friedman. a 2009 University of Michigan graduate who worked at WDIV for three years.
Mic Write at The Majestic last October. Kenneth Baxter Jr. is in the background.
Gross, co-founder of an education information site called Detroit Charter Data, talks with Morris about observations and experiences that inform "H.O.M.E.S.," which has 1,440 viewings in 16 days.
Mic Write, a 2013 Kresge Foundation Literary Arts fellow and member of a rap collective called Cold Men Young (a play on Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor), explains that he heard stories of friends displaced for the sake of renewal and felt compelled to create something that gets to the heart of the matter. "I don't mind new things coming in and new lifeblood coming in," he says. "But I think it’s an issue when there are certain exclusions that come along with it. So I wanted to write an anthem that said, 'You can come in, but you can't take what I'm not going to give.'"
So, while the song doesn't dis the new, it does pay deference to the old. In the accompanying video, the two rappers walk through rich and poor neighborhoods, letting homes of all conditions take the spotlight. . . .
"I used to live in Midtown," Mic Write told me. "And I was down in Midtown when it was not as bustling as it is now. I was able to see firsthand some of the renewal efforts. . . . So you kind of learn the terms for it: gentrification, urban renewal. Sometimes you don’t have the terms, you just have a feeling and it goes from, 'Oh wow, look at all these cool places that I can go to!' to hearing stories that feel a little bit darker, like about people getting evicted, either formally or just priced out because it was becoming that type of place."
The rapper's community involvement includes creative writing classes at Detroit schools with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project.
In his video's YouTube description, Morris calls it "my ode to my city/my hood/my block, and really for everyone who comes from a place that may not be much, but it's yours and there's beauty in that. And sometimes fam -- that's all that matters."
On Tuesday morning, he tweets that the song has "resonated even deeper than I imagined. Humbled."
