Waajeed on Dilla, Slum Village and Detroit's Music Future | Living for the City FULL Interview

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 the world. He talks about his years with Slum Village, keeping the trains on the tracks, designing the album covers, filming the footage and why he eventually walked away from hip hop entirely.

He breaks down the Platinum Pied Pipers record, his collaboration with Dwele, and the genre-defying freedom behind Memoirs of Hi-Tech Jazz.

Waajeed also opens up about why he came back to Detroit after nine years in New York, what it means to own the things you pour yourself into, and how the Underground Music Academy became a space where every skillset he has — design, music, building, mentorship — finally came together in one place.

This one is about legacy, lineage, and what it means to be a conduit.

CHAPTERS

00:28 - The Underground Music Academy and the NAACP Building

03:08 - What Mentorship Actually Means: Lessons from Amp Fiddler

08:13 - Growing Up Next to a Prison: Urgency, Survival, and Detroit

12:29 - Funky Drummer, Dilla's Basement, and the Birth of a Sound

14:41 - Slum Village: Keeping the Trains on the Tracks

19:22 - Platinum Pied Pipers and Breaking Away from Hip Hop