We meet up with the Michigan rapper in the pouring rain to discuss faith, family, pressure, and his new album, New Detroit.
I wanted to get to Washington Square Park a half hour earlier than scheduled, grab coffee, then find a dope spot for us to post up. Instead, I arrived at four on the dot, drenched from an unexpected day shower. Frazzled, I almost mistook Malik, Lelo’s younger brother, for the rapper himself.
With the rain steadily pounding the Manhattan streets, Lelo, Malik, Lelo’s manager and I sought refuge inside the rapper’s air-conditioned, label-sponsored Escalade. Outside of his pony hair Margiela high tops, Lelo was mostly dressed down, rocking Ksubi denim shorts and a nice but nondescript Zic Made black tee. His demeanor was equally understated, with a kindness that made it easy for us to sidestep the logistical hiccups.
Lelo has declared himself the leader of a movement he calls “New Detroit,” but he’s still wrestling with what that looks like. For as long as the 25-year-old has been conscious, Detroit has been on the brink of mainstream resurgence, a trajectory obscured by pop-leaning superstars, hyperlocal collectives, and a better positioned Atlanta scene. But things are finally changing. There was the unexpected crossover of rappers like Tee Grizzley and Sada Baby towards the end of last decade; the concurrent rise of the Flint scene (assisted by Detroit veterans like Peezy, who found and nurtured Rio Da Yung OG); and rappers from outside Michigan looking to the Motor City for inspiration. For the first time, these highly idiosyncratic artists are making their mark across the game at large.
Michigan rap can be as introspective as it can be darkly comedic, as plain-spoken and aspirational as coy and uncomfortably horny; the scene brims with one-liners and verses that pull from stand-up routines as much as legends and fables passed down through generations. But most rappers skew on the older side. Lelo has a youthful psychedelic drawl and introspective pen that lands him somewhere between the impassioned soul-bearing of Bandgang Lonnie Bands and the slick, monotone croon of Baby Smoove. When I first heard his distinctly Midwestern accent, I told a friend he sounded like emo Babytron, but the more I listened, I was taken by his reflective, exceptionally measured thoughts. His influences run as disparate as Lucki and André 3000, but he and his in-house team have an appreciation for all corners of Detroit music—from the soulful bravado of Babyface Ray to the ghettotech of their youth. This attention to detail makes him sound like a weathered student of the game, both on and off wax.
Over the course of an hour, Lelo and I spoke about art, the music business, and how faith carries him forward. There was a pragmatism and a disarming candor to Lelo’s answers that’s reflected in his music: New Detroit, his debut album, is calculated and urgent, wound tightly and reverent for both his hometown and broader influences. It’s the same intentionality that first captivated me.
The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Narsh: What brings you to New York?
Lelo: Shit, press run, new album. Feel me? I gotta make my rounds, meet a couple people, shake some hands.
When I listen to your music, and in other interviews I’ve read, you talk about being “meticulous” with your art. I was wondering if that translates into what you’re building business-wise.
Lelo: I got a habit of thinking about everything a little too meticulously at times, you feel me? In a lot of ways it’s slowed down my process. Recently, I’ve kind of fell in love with the bumps and bruises approach. Cuz I think I learn the best when I jump in and go for it—
Fuck up a little?
Lelo: You feel me? Fuck up a little bit. And I know that I got people around me who will never let me fuck up too much. So I think that’s my approach now, rather than being like, “Everything’s gotta be in order before I move.”
Do you put a lot of pressure on yourself?
Lelo: Of course. Like, naming something “New Detroit,” and having it be something that’s like your child—you want it to be amazing. This is my one career. But I don’t know. I try not to pigeonhole myself. The nature of what I wanted “New Detroit” to be—it never made sense to give it a textbook definition. Cuz it’s growing with me, you feel me? I task people to look at themselves five years ago and tell me that they predicted who the fuck they were going to be. At one point, “New Detroit” was just a fly thing that I said. Before that, it was just a comment. After that, it became branding. Then it became, “Oh shit,” people hittin’ me up, like, “Oh my god, I really resonate with this.” Then it became a community. I think as time progresses, who knows what it’s going to be? Right now, it’s one of them things that’s super personal to me. And it’s not even about being, like, “Oh, in with the new, out with the old.” It’s moreso, like… it’s just a vibe. It’s this culture we’re cutting out for ourselves that’s going to take us a long, long way.
I get the opposite of “in with the new, out with the old,” when I think of “New Detroit.” You’re clearly paying respect and showing reverence through the music.
Lelo: People look at it like it’s becoming a genre. I don’t look at it as a genre. I honestly look at it in the same way as, like, you go buy some Rick Owens clothes—that’s the label, that’s the branding behind it, that’s what “New Detroit” is. But at some point, the design language, the style of it, the flair of it—the community kind of creates their own little space.
How old are you again?
Lelo: 25.
So you were a teen when Detroit was on its run last decade. Over the past ten years, it’s felt like Detroit has had a chance to cement itself again. But you always need the younger generation to help do that. So, maybe, it’s just synergy, the right time for you to take up that task.
Lelo: Hell yeah. 100%. I’ll tell you something: My steps be guided, bro. A lot of this shit? I just be put in the perfect scenario. All I gotta do is be in the right mindstate to take it, operate as I need to.
What role does faith play in your music? Is that something you think about?
Lelo: Hell yeah! My mom is super God-fearing. My mom’s super, super, super Christian. So I was already pushed in that direction from a young age. But even beyond that, just finding my own relationship with God—it became less about me going to church or anything like that. It got to a point where a voice guided me to do right, versus do wrong. And even on top of that, bro, when I ask for shit? It just happens. And it’s happened so much throughout my life. Coming from having so little—I mean, like, nowhere to stay, really fucked up—to the point where I’m at now? It’s hard for me not to have faith. That’s what separates you. That’s what keeps you from giving up. Faith everyday.
“My whole family is full of dreamers.”
Can you speak about “Survivor’s Guilt,” the making of the song and the concept in general? Is this a recent or longtime feeling?
Lelo: Part of it is recent, you feel me? Just growing up in a city like Detroit, you lose people, you see people make decisions that fuck things up for them, steer their life in a direction from an early age. Also in the sense that, bro, I’m fortunate! I got grandparents that really care for me. I got mom, my pops. I got all types of people who was there to shield me and show me another way. And other people ain’t that fortunate. I got lucky. I’m fortunate. I survived and I made it this way, because of these things.
The process of “Survivor’s Guilt,” was me just, like, writing a love letter to people in my life. It’s a story. I feel like anybody who’s been in a similar situation as me, with anything, whether you’re going to school or decided to go to college, you’re having the same type of dialogue about trying to lead your people to the right way.
“Survivor’s Guilt” is really the song that represents “New Detroit” the most. It was one of those things—I didn’t make it to go on the album. I was up 4 a.m. one day. Rolled out of bed. And that’s what happened. As soon as it was done, I knew.
How important is telling your story vs. making a hit?
Lelo: There are a lot of ways to tell a story. You can tell a story through, literally, like, point A, point B, this is my life, this is what’s going on. And two: You can just display culture. “Soldier,” that’s very much a narrative piece. I’m talking about my life—me, me, me. “Survivor’s Guilt,” I’m telling a story. But “Good For Your Health,” “Forever In A Day,” “Paris”—“Paris,” that’s ghettotech, that’s “New Detroit” through and through. So, I’m not chasing a hit, but the hit comes. If you’re true to the culture, and you’re really looking at what you got, that bounce, what you need for that is just going to come out. When you hear some Popcaan shit and you hear those drums? That’s how the hit comes.
So there’s no pressure to think about the mainstream? I don’t even know if there’s a proper mainstream sound these days. Everyone’s doing everything. Like, Drake has a different accent every month now, tryna figure out what’ll work. So if he’s struggling, trying to figure out what works for everyone, is that something you even think about?
Lelo: The artist I wanna be—the artists I like and look up to, they don’t appeal to everybody. They might have a song that does, but I like to think that’s by chance. And I don’t ignore it. Of course, I would love to have a song where it’s like, “Damn, this is monumental.” Shit, I’m tryna buy my momma a house! But I don’t know. Definitely, I’m not focused on it. That’s never the main goal.
Can you talk more about how closely you work with producers?
Lelo: A lot of it is building relationships.
Who produced “Paris”?
Lelo: Yeah, my friends. Shit, that’s Shogun, C Dub, and our other friend [4am]juno.
And that feels natural, because you’re familiar with them and the sound. But something like “Chirp”—it’s such a weird beat, such a weird song structure. What draws you to that?
Lelo: What this is, bruh—I feel like it’s a happy accident. Sometimes you just get an inkling to make an on-the-fly decision. Skettio had sent me the original beat, and I liked the beat, for sure, but it just wasn’t coming to me how it needed to. So I reversed the whole beat. And that’s how “Chirp” became “Chirp.”
I like the idea of me creating the structure of a song vs. the beat creating the structure of the song. I just think shit like that is always the flyest. That’s a story I’ll be able to tell for years and years and years, on how this song came to be. Just fly little decisions on the fly.
Did family always support you from the jump? Does music run in the family some way?
Lelo: My father and my mom, they both dabbled in music when they were younger. My mom spent her whole pregnancy in the studio, with my dad, recording 24/7. They’ve been supportive of me. They might not have always seen it, or not been as supportive as they are now, but that’s just the nature of shit. When you see shit work, it’s like, “Okay, really feed into it.” My whole family is full of dreamers. Especially, I think, on my pop’s side of the family. My grandfather? Super big dreamer. He always wanted me to be in music. My dad too. Soon as he figured out that I really liked to rap, he invested in it, like, “Go ahead, go do it.”
What kind of music did your parents make?
Lelo: My father rapped. My mother was also on some rap shit, some girl group rap shit.
Oh, so you just had, like, flows coming in through the womb.
Lelo: Literally.
What aspect of songwriting most interests you? Two influences you’ve cited, Earl and Lucki, both care about their lyrics in their own way. How important are lyrics to you?
Lelo: In the sense of Earl—it’s just the way you put things. You drive home so much emotion and power into a little-bitty phrase. And before that, André 3000—that was the first person I was hearing putting things in a way that I never heard ‘em. And that really, really, really inspired me. Overall, what I enjoy most about the process is not writing. Like, I don’t think anything on the project is written. It’s just the realness of it—and a lot of that comes from on the fly decisions. The times on the project where it sounded like I was fucked up about something, or sad about someting? It’s because I really was sad. And I didn’t even take the time to go write it down! I just went to go talk about it. And that’s the part of the process that I like the most. When I know, like, I said exactly how I felt in that moment.
There will come a time where I want to write something. But I think with this one, it just wasn’t like that. Moreso just… let it fly.
With New Detroit, how do you whittle down what makes the album? Because some of the loosies you dropped along the way, not for nothing, are great. They feel like album cuts.
Lelo: Shit, since the inception of “New Detroit,” I’ve been working on the New Detroit album. Whether any of those songs lasted this long to make it to the project, every single thing I was recording was to be good enough to be on the album. Even when it was a one-off single. And the process? It didn’t really feel like I was choosing anything. I almost didn’t want to think about how many songs would be on the project, so I wouldn’t feel enclosed. I just kept making shit, and then, shit, the weakest link would just get booted off, and booted off, and booted off—
Who decides what the weakest link is? You? Do you have people you trust on the team?
Lelo: They definitely help. And, sometimes, they have to tell me to shut up. Because I will talk my way out of some stuff. And sometimes the opposite way around—I don’t listen to anybody! I’m like, “No, this has to be on there.”
“Pot of Greed” is fire too. I was listening to all of the singles on the way here. “Pot of Greed” not being on the album, the Babyface Ray collab—I was just wondering how you were making these decisions. Were there boxes you were trying to check in terms of what you were trying to get across to fans?
Lelo: I mean, a little bit. Really “Survivor’s Guilt” and “Paris”—those very much so felt like what I needed to do, you feel me? Other than that, hell naw. It was moreso, like, how am I feeling right now? I was structurally trying to think of it like a movie. The way I think about it, it’s kind of like—do I want it to be Lord of the Rings? An odyssey story? Where it’s this, like—alright, boom: this slow uptick of a hero’s story, climax, resolution, get ready for the sequel.
Or do I want it to be, like, number two in a series, where it’s already hot, and you come in and just throw them into it, then it slows down. And that’s what I fell in love with. Cuz all my favorite movies, they just kinda throw you in there, and you kinda gotta get your land legs and start listening to understand what’s going on.
New Detroit is a bit of an odyssey—how you start with “Soldier” and end with “Survivor’s Guilt.” You did both: It’s a continuation of the stage you been setting, but the album can also stand on its own, as someone’s first introduction to Lelo’s music.
Lelo: 100%. Weirdly enough, I think it feels like an odyssey for people who already are familiar with the music, because I haven’t let them in that much on anything, and it damn near feels like a number two for people who aren’t familiar, because I just throw them in so quickly.
What does “Between The 20s” mean? Because that’s one of my favorite songs, and I have no idea what it means.
Lelo: So, I’m referencing a brand—
Ah, so that’s why I don’t know—
Lelo: Yeah, yeah. It’s a Japanese brand. Like, an old Japanese brand. They don’t even make it anymore.
It just sounds mad deep, even if I don’t know what it means—
Lelo: Hell yeah.
2020? That was a crazy year for everyone! Is that what he’s talking about? And the song is very melodic, different for you—
Lelo: [Laughs] Super vibey, yeah. And a lot of themes with the brand are, like, “revolution,” “new world”—there’s this big recycling motif. Things are ever-moving. Like, we’re in this year of change, and there’s so many things happening at the same time. Their brand had hella war motifs everywhere. Shit like that. And I always thought that that was super fly. I loved it. So, fitting that whole idea of war motifs, and then also thinking personally, “What are the things I love aesthetically? As an artist, what speaks to me?” “Between The 20s” was just fly. Super fly.
That feels like a moment of synergy with the whole album, when you talk about recycling. You’re basically trying to rebirth your own influences throughout the album —
Lelo: And even, you feel me, the theme of, “Lord please fill my cup.” All of that shit… It’s all symbolic of the whole thing.
Is your mom waiting for you to make a “real” spiritual track?
Lelo: Yup. For sure.
What track on this album was the most challenging to make?
Lelo: I think “Between The 20s” was a challenge! You feel me? If you over-describe some shit, it’s easy to end up making it sound fly to somebody. At some point, they’re going to understand it. But when you’re saying so little? I feel like it’s a lot more pressure. The ghettotech shit is second nature, the rap shit is super easy. Damn near the more aggressively I’m rapping, the easier the song is to make.
Is it tough for you to be vulnerable through lyrics? Is that why you hold back? Outside of understanding that less is more, is there another side of you that doesn’t feel ready yet to be more open?
Lelo: Nah, not really. I think really what it is is an artist’s story. I personally don’t like when everything is given to me too early. I still got a lot of life left, a lot of things to understand. So it’ll come a time where I feel like maybe these topics that I dance around, I’ll delve into. But I’m waiting till it calls to me, you feel me? It ain’t here yet.