Tee Grizzley's new song "Teetroit" is a grim and vital portrait of an ignored population on the edge. The track's tense atmosphere is fuelled by Grizzley's instance that there could soon be a replay of the 1967 Detroit riots (also the basis of an upcoming film by Kathryn Bigelow that he's very excited for).
The rapper's notoriously autobiographical style serves him – and the listener – well in his resulting lesson. Because for him, it's personal, as he reveals in a conversation with his grandfather who says that his family could have had some wealth were it not for those riots. Grizzley's complicated relationship with Detroit is part of why he knows there are no easy answers for what ails it: "They wanna take the guns out the city / Naw them boys got too many" he raps in opening, minutes before he flips the surrounding verse on the conclusion: "Come get these guns out my city / Before we riot like the '60s."
