“If you don’t have a strong foundation, that whole thing sooner or later is going to fall down.” Detroit City Council President James Tate returns to Detroit is Different for a grounded, candid conversation about the patience, pressure, and politics behind neighborhood transformation. From his early campaign days in 2009 to now serving as Council President, Tate reflects on how public leadership demands listening beyond social media noise, saying he would rather call a critic directly than argue online. The interview digs deep into Brightmoor, where Tate explains why he invested “a million dollars each year” into training programs to improve residents’ financial futures before new development raises costs around them. He names the hard truth: families living on a median income near $24,000 face many challenges & crisis living day to day lives. Tate also speaks frankly about solar farms, land value, fair compensation, and the danger of offering residents “money to move/relocate.” This episode connects Detroit’s past of disinvestment to its future of community-rooted development, asking who benefits when neighborhoods are rebuilt—and who gets to stay.

Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.

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“Food is a tough business,” and Chef Ederique Goudia, founder of In the Business of Food, steps into Detroit is Different to show why love for cooking must meet licensing, safety, strategy, and community care. Known as Chef E, she breaks down how Eastern Market, the Incubator Kitchen, and her workshops support everyone from “a food truck, a lemonade stand or a chain of restaurants” to entrepreneurs selling barbecue sauce “out of their trunk” who are ready to get legal, licensed, and onto bigger shelves. This conversation moves from the real cost of spoilage to the public responsibility of feeding people safely, with Chef E reminding listeners that food “can become dangerous very quickly.” She also explains free food safety manager certifications for Detroit residents, allergy awareness, Ask an Expert sessions, manufacturing, distribution, mental health, social media, and hospitality support. This episode matters because food has always been a gateway into Detroit culture, family, business, and survival. Chef E connects the past of homegrown hustle to a future where Detroit food entrepreneurs can build businesses with knowledge, confidence, and community-rooted support.

Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.

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Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing info@detroitisdifferent.com

Find out more at https://detroit-is-different.pinecast.co

“I am a lifelong Eastsider. I was born, raised, educated, and I still live on the East Side of Detroit.” Toinu Reeves, Michigan State Senate candidate for District 3, joins Detroit is Different with a story rooted in neighborhood, family, and economic vision. From being born at Hutzel Hospital to growing up near Mack and Chrysler, from Bates Academy to deep family roots in Jefferson Chalmers, Reeves carries the Eastside into every part of his campaign. He remembers Jefferson Chalmers as “one of the most beautiful places,” filled with big trees, river parks, swans, canals, elders, cousins, Spades tables, and pickup basketball. Known as the “Eastside Economist,” Reeves explains why he is running: to bring lived experience, financial knowledge, and policy skill together for a district that deserves more than campaign promises. With a background in economics, finance, public finance, tax policy, and trade, he breaks down “economic leakage,” collective ownership, neighborhood investment funds, and how Detroiters can build wealth by owning pieces of the businesses they already support. This episode is about protecting legacy, building Black wealth, and electing leaders with the tools to turn Eastside experience into policy that works for the future of Black Detroit.

Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.

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Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing info@detroitisdifferent.com

Find out more at https://detroit-is-different.pinecast.co

“I came here from her love an spirit of Detroit”—that truth opens a powerful Detroit is Different conversation with Yelena Ramautar, Community Engager for the Caribbean Community Service Center, about migration, belonging, memory, and the work required to truly become part of a community. Yelena traces her journey from Guyana to the Bronx, then to Detroit in 2015 after her adoptive mother told her, “I got a home. Just come on. You can find your way and figure it out.” She reflects on New York gentrification, school closures, immigrant identity, and the shock of being “othered” at a predominantly white college after growing up among Black, Caribbean, Latino, and African communities. In Detroit, she learned that relationships may crack the door open, “but you have to do the work to show that you’re invested.” Her mother’s Detroit story—Cass Tech, Wayne State, teaching, and hearing Dr. King speak on Woodward—connects Black excellence, movement history, and family legacy. This episode asks what responsible cultural connection looks like as neighborhoods change and diasporic communities meet. Yelena’s story reminds us that Detroit’s future depends on honoring memory, resisting extraction, building trust, and turning migration into meaningful commitment to people, place, and shared liberation across generations.

Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.

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Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing info@detroitisdifferent.com

Find out more at https://detroit-is-different.pinecast.co

“You carry this brilliance in you—this is something that’s in your DNA.” In this moving Detroit is Different conversation, Tiara Jones, owner of Black Beautiful & Brilliant, shares how love, grief, family, and purpose shaped her decision to continue the brand created by her late husband. Tiara traces her roots from Inkster to Alabama, connecting her family’s Great Migration story and the trauma of racial violence to the strength that generations carried into Metro Detroit. She reflects on meeting her husband during the COVID era, building a life together, and choosing to preserve his vision after his passing: “I’m going to pick this brand back up, because it can be bigger than what he envisioned.” More than clothing or a slogan, Black Beautiful & Brilliant becomes a lesson for their son and daughter about “what love looks like,” commitment, loyalty, and cultural pride. Tiara also speaks honestly about grief, finding her voice, supporting Black women, and reminding the community that brilliance is not something granted from outside—it already lives within us. This episode connects the past to the future by showing how ancestral survival, neighborhood memory, Black enterprise, and family legacy can become tools for healing, ownership, and collective possibility.

Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.

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Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing info@detroitisdifferent.com

Find out more at https://detroit-is-different.pinecast.co

“Sometimes people think that because it don’t happen overnight, they’re not doing well… keep going. Don’t stop.” In this powerful Detroit is Different conversation, Rev. Alonzo Bell, Executive Director of The Redeem Team, traces a life shaped by East Side Detroit, faith, family, discipline, and the long work of community service. Bell takes listeners from his family’s Arkansas roots and Black Bottom beginnings to Gratiot, where poverty was real but love, church, and neighborhood connection gave children a foundation. He reflects on Martin Evers Missionary Baptist Church, Pastor Austin Byrd Jr.’s civil-rights vision, the changing East Side of the 1980s, and the perseverance required to keep building when resources are scarce. “It comes a certain point of time where you just put enough time in and then the scales begin to move in your direction,” Bell explains. His story connects Detroit’s past—migration, Black church leadership, neighborhood pride, factory loss, and survival—to its future: patient institution-building, youth guidance, faith-centered organizing, and leadership rooted in service. This episode reminds us that community transformation is not a sudden breakthrough; it is brick-by-brick work, witnessed by the people, strengthened through relationships, and sustained by those committed enough to keep fighting for generations ahead.

Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.

Follow, like, share, and subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Sticher.

Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing info@detroitisdifferent.com

Find out more at https://detroit-is-different.pinecast.co

“I didn’t want to be any attorney. I wanted to be a second chance attorney for our people,” Jade Mathis shares in a Detroit is Different conversation that moves from Black Bottom ancestry to courtroom advocacy and City Hall leadership. Jade’s Detroit story begins with grandparents who migrated from Little Rock and Tuscaloosa during the Great Migration, met in Black Bottom, and built family roots on Dexter and Philadelphia, where her grandmother gardened, fed neighborhood children, and kept beauty alive on the block. Jade carries that same community care into her legal journey. After illness shifted her path from journalism to law, Jade pushed through LSAT setbacks, law school rejection, and taking the bar six times before becoming the attorney she promised God she would be. Her work included the Project Clean Slate, expungements, NAACP service, GED tutoring, and civil rights cases with Attorney Ben Crump traveling the nation, representing families struggling from police killings and fighting through litigation, protest, and grief. Now leading Detroit’s Civil Rights, Inclusion & Opportunity Department, CRIO, Jade brings those lessons home: clean records, recognize grassroots leadership, defend rights, and make government answer to the people’s future.

Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.

Follow, like, share, and subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Sticher.

Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing info@detroitisdifferent.com

Find out more at https://detroit-is-different.pinecast.co

“Literally all of the creative gifts I have come from him.” Brittini Ward brings that truth into Detroit is Different with a conversation rooted in lineage, love, and the music that raises us. From tracing her family’s migration through Kentucky, Arkansas, Jackson, Mississippi, Parkside, Six Mile, Palmer Park, and Sherwood Forest, Brittini shows how “this creativity, this movement, this dance, this Detroit, this down south” lives in the body before it ever becomes art. She reflects on her father—“drawing,” “pop locking,” DJing, writing, singing, serving as Sergeant Ward, and still making tapes saying “Goodnight, LaMarr Ward, goodnight, Ashlee Ward, goodnight, Brittini Ward” so his children could feel him close. That spirit becomes Baba Duke, her multimedia exhibition at Irwin House honoring music fathers and daughters through oral histories, portraiture, sound, memory, and love. This episode is about more than an exhibit; it is about how Black Detroit preserves fathers, daughters, neighborhoods, and futures through story. It connects the past we inherit to the future we build when memory becomes community practice. Come listen, feel, remember, and bring somebody you love there. Visit Baba Duke at Irwin House Detroit, 2351 West Grand Boulevard, Thursday–Saturday 12 PM–7 PM and Sunday 12 PM–6 PM.

Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.

Follow, like, share, and subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Sticher.

Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing info@detroitisdifferent.com

Find out more at https://detroit-is-different.pinecast.co