1/12/07, 5:45 pm EST

Assignment One Finalist: Joey Michaels on Detroit

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Note: This is not an official Rolling Stone article. What follows is a submission to the “I’m From Rolling Stone” writing competition.

by Joey Michaels
Age: 21

Want a crash course in urban decay? Visit and take notes on the abandoned building-lined, crime riddled, pothole-coated streets of Detroit, Michigan. Make sure to bring a few notebooks.

Whether it is art imitating life or the reverse, the essence of the state of the city has been captured in the music it has produced since its Motown days.

Alas, the tradition of correlation still seems to be alive and kicking. Today, much of the “The D’s” musical output is a brand of hip hop featuring angry and violent rhymes set to sinisterly dark and evil beats. The ruthlessly cruel stories contained in these raps are all too real; there’s a disturbing abundance of sneakers hanging by their laces from electrical lines over the streets.

The inner city’s hip hop community continues to revolve around the intense, no-holds-barred rap battles the city is known for, most notably hosted by Seven Mile’s infamous Hip Hop Shop and any available dingy basement. But these popular non-violent wars of wordplay have come to symbolize the firearm fights happening just outside their venues.

As hardcore hip hop has paralleled the renegade-like atmosphere of Detroit for a number of years now, the two have recently shown signs of colliding. On New Year’s Eve of 2005, platinum-selling Eminem protégé Obie Trice survived a gunshot wound to the head while driving along an expressway through the city. Only four months later, Eminem’s best friend and fellow D12 member Proof was gunned down in a nightclub on the notorious Eight Mile Road.

A wake up call is needed in the Motor City. As Trice preached in his eulogy at Proof’s funeral, “We’re killing each other, dog. And it’s all about nothing. Nothing. Nothing. We’re all dying…over nothing.”