~ cueing up the show ~
~ pulling every episode ~
Living for the City — Every episode — OmList
om
list
Swipe
Tournament
Lists
Friends
All
Movies
TV
Books
Games
Music
Podcasts
People
▾
Sign in
Every episode
Living for the City
14 episodes
LADYMONIX on Why She Left LA and Made Detroit Home | Living for the City Full Interview
Ep 13 · Aug 5, 2026 · 31 min
LADYMONIX is a Detroit DJ who drove across the country from LA in 2016, spent her first year just going out and dancing, and has held a Sunday night residency at Motor City Wine for nine years. This is her full conversation with host Hanif Abdurraqib. In this interview, LADYMONIX talks about why she left LA — the cliques, the cutthroat energy, the $3,500 overhead that made creativity feel impossible — and why Detroit gave her something she didn't even know she was looking for. She talks about ho…
Carl Craig on Detroit Techno, the Art of the Alias, and the Future of Electronic Music | Living for the City Full Interview
Ep 12 · Jul 29, 2026 · 40 min
Carl Craig is one of Detroit techno's most important architects, the producer behind Bug in the Bassbin, Landcruising, More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art, and a body of work released under so many aliases — Paperclip People, 69, Innerzone Orchestra — that the full scope of his influence is almost impossible to map. This is his full conversation with host Hanif Abdurraqib. In this interview, Carl traces his origin story from playing Axel F on his cousin's Sequential Circuits synthesizer…
Kevin Saunderson on Pioneering Detroit Techno and Its Legacy | Living for the City FULL Interview
Ep 11 · Jul 22, 2026 · 49 min
Kevin Saunderson is one of the Belleville Three, the teenagers from suburban Michigan who invented Detroit techno, the architect behind Inner City, and one of the most influential catalogs in electronic music history. This is his full conversation with host Hanif Abdurraqib. In this interview, Kevin traces his path from New York to Inkster to Belleville, where he met Derrick May and eventually Juan Atkins, and where there was nothing to do but make music. He talks about the early days at the Mus…
Waajeed on Dilla, Slum Village and Detroit's Music Future | Living for the City FULL Interview
Ep 10 · Jul 15, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
Waajeed is a Detroit producer and DJ who came up with J Dilla and Slum Village, co-founded the Underground Music Academy in the old NAACP building on the north end of Detroit, and hosts a weekly show on WDET. This is his full conversation with host Hanif Abdurraqib. In this interview, Waajeed traces his origin story from rolling dice in Pershing High School's parking lot to landing in Amp Fiddler's basement, where a generation of Detroit artists learned how to make music and how to move through…
DJ Minx on Building Detroit's Techno Scene from the Ground Up | Living for the City FULL Interview
Ep 9 · Jul 8, 2026 · 48 min
DJ Minx is one of the founding architects of Detroit's techno and house scene, the creator of Women on Wax, and one of the most important DJs the city has ever produced. This is her full conversation with host Hanif Abdurraqib. In this extended interview, Minx traces her origin story from discovering techno through Electrifying Mojo on the radio to walking into her first gig with a bag of records and getting laughed at by the women at the door. She breaks down the difference between house and te…
The Teachers and Students Carrying Detroit's Sound Forward | Living for the City Ep. 8
Ep 8 · Jul 1, 2026 · 27 min
Detroit has never been a city that lives in its past. Its greatest tradition has always been inventing the future. In the season finale of Living for the City, host Hanif Abdurraqib looks beyond Detroit's musical legacy to the people who will define its next chapter. At the Detroit School of Arts, teacher Maritza turned a hallway conversation with Waajeed and Cornelius Harris into a techno program where students are learning not just the history of Detroit music, but how to shape its future. Som…
How Detroit's Crate Diggers Kept the City's Music Alive | Living for the City Ep. 7
Ep 7 · Jun 24, 2026 · 24 min
In Detroit, records were never just records. They were history, community, memory, and proof that you cared enough to go looking. In Episode 7 of Living for the City, host Hanif Abdurraqib explores Detroit's enduring vinyl culture and the people who have dedicated their lives to preserving music one record at a time. This is a story about collectors, DJs, store owners, and believers — people who see a record not as a product, but as a relationship. Ben Blackwell walks through the Third Man press…
The Artists Who Left Detroit and the Pull That Brought Them Home | Living for the City Ep. 6
Ep 6 · Jun 17, 2026 · 25 min
Every artist Detroit has ever made has had to decide at some point whether to stay or go. The ones who left never fully left. In Episode 6 of Living for the City, host Hanif Abdurraqib follows the migration patterns of Detroit's musicians — where they went, why they left, and what brought some of them back. Berry Gordy IV, son of the Motown founder, speaks from Los Angeles about what it meant when Motown moved west and what that departure did to the city it left behind. House Shoes, the DJ who s…
How Detroit Keeps Its Greatest Music Legacies Alive | Living for the City Ep. 5
Ep 5 · Jun 10, 2026 · 29 min
Every great Detroit artist had someone who believed in them before they believed in themselves. In Episode 5 of Living for the City, host Hanif Abdurraqib traces the mentorship chains that run underneath Detroit's music history like a second infrastructure. Guilty Simpson, the last artist J Dilla was working with before he passed, reflects on what it means to carry that gift forward and why Dilla's music still feels so urgently alive. Nasaan, Proof's son, opens up about spending years running fr…
How Detroit's Women Claimed Their Place in the Music Scene | Living for the City Ep. 4
Ep 4 · Jun 3, 2026 · 33 min
Every era of Detroit music has been shaped by women, even when history tried to leave them out of the story. In Episode 4 of Living for the City, host Hanif Abdurraqib explores the women who pushed past barriers, challenged expectations, and transformed Detroit's music scene in the process. DJ Minx reflects on three decades of demanding respect in spaces that weren't designed for her, and how that struggle led to Women on Wax, a collective dedicated to opening doors for the next generation. Bren…
How Detroit's Radio Stations Shaped a Generation | Living for the City Ep. 3
Ep 3 · May 27, 2026 · 32 min
In Detroit, radio wasn't background noise. It was the whole conversation. In Episode 3 of Living for the City, host Hanif Abdurraqib traces the invisible infrastructure of Detroit's sound. Not the studios or the stages, but the airwaves. Kevin Saunderson remembers hearing the Electrifying Mojo and knowing, before he ever made a record, what music was supposed to feel like. Brian McCollum, the Detroit Free Press journalist who has spent decades refusing to let the city's music go undocumented, tr…
The Buildings That Built Detroit's Sound Are Almost All Gone | Living For the City Ep. 2
Ep 2 · May 20, 2026 · 20 min
The city’s sound was shaped by places never built to last – until the music changed everything. In Episode 2 of Living for the City, Hanif Abdurraqib asks what happens to the spaces that shaped the music once the city around them begins to change. Waajeed, DJ and producer and one of Detroit's living encyclopedias, walks through what was lost when the lofts at The Griswold got converted into luxury apartments. DJ Minx reflects on the Music Institute as something close to a religion, and what it f…
How Detroit's Working Class Built the Sound the Whole World Stole | Living for the City Ep. 1
Ep 1 · May 13, 2026 · 24 min
Detroit’s music didn’t come from nowhere. It came from working people who carried the rhythm of the city with them long after the shift ended. In the debut episode of Living for the City, host Hanif Abdurraqib traces the thread between labor and art that runs through everything Detroit has ever made. Berry Gordy IV reflects on his father modeling Motown on the assembly line and what it meant to build stars the same way Detroit built cars. Kevin Saunderson breaks down the early days of proving pa…
Living for the City (Official Trailer): Premieres May 13th!
May 10, 2026 · 1 min
Before Detroit gave the world Motown, techno, and hip-hop, it gave the world something harder to name: a feeling that music made in basements and backrooms and borrowed spaces could become the soundtrack to an entire generation's life. That is the story Living for the City is here to tell, and nobody alive is better equipped to tell it than Hanif Abdurraqib. MacArthur Fellow. New York Times bestselling author. The most gifted writer working at the intersection of music, memory, and American iden…
← Back to the show
