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    • Detroit offers a diverse canvas for musical explorer ‘Leaf Erikson’
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    Detroit offers a diverse canvas for musical explorer ‘Leaf Erikson’

    Vaseline Posted on

    A young Corey Greenleaf enjoyed playing dodgeball with his good friend Jemele Hill. Hill also taught Greenleaf to never run from trouble, a practice he remains true to as award-winning MC ‘Leaf Erikson.’

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    Pyramid Elementary School, once located at 17151 Wyoming on McNichols Road, was a relatively small, private institution. But it had quite an impact on lifelong Detroiter Vernon Corey Greenleaf.

    When Greenleaf visited Pyramid in the mid-1980s, he met two lifelong friends: Jemele Hill, an Emmy Award-winning journalist and former sports reporter for the Detroit Free Press, and Richard LaGrant-Roper, known in music circles as Dj Wise1.

    It was during a fourth-grade civics class at Pyramid that Greenleaf was introduced to Norwegian explorer Leif Erikson, prompting a question from the young man who grew up near the former Cooley High School (Hubbell Avenue and Chalfonte Street) in northwest Detroit.

    “There were five or six sentences about Leif Erikson in our textbook, and what I read said that he reached America about 500 years before Columbus,” Greenleaf, now 47, explained as he recalled his early classroom experiences at a black-owned school staffed by black teachers. “About five or six weeks later, when we had a lesson on Christopher Columbus, I thought to myself, ‘Why are we taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America?’ I raised my hand to ask that question, and I waved my hand back and forth, and the teacher told me to lower my hand.”

    As Greenleaf tells it, by the fourth grade he had already developed a reputation as a That child who frequently asked confusing questions in class that often took longer than the allotted class time to answer. But even though Greenleaf’s question went unanswered that day, he says the experience only made him more curious about the world. And Greenleaf’s connection to Leif Erikson has never ended, as evidenced by the stage name he adopted, “Leaf Erikson,” which appears alongside three Detroit Music Awards presented to Greenleaf by the Detroit Music Awards Foundation (DMAF) since 2020.

    “The name Leif Erikson always intrigued me, but I chose Leaf Erikson as my stage name because I wanted to explore the world through music,” said Greenleaf, who was honored by DMAF in 2020 as “Outstanding Rap MC” and again in 2022 as “Outstanding Rap Artist” and for the “Outstanding Rap Recording” honor given to the album “Moonlight Over Mt. Sinai.”

    Over four consecutive nights, beginning July 15, Greenleaf — who can be heard as Leaf Erikson with Boog Brown on the July 12 single “Boog’s Groove” — chronicled the evolution of his musical exploration from his home in northwest Detroit. Greenleaf began in earnest in his early 20s, and his travels have typically taken place late at night and on weekends, after he’s had a chance to recharge from a demanding day job, including a finance job in a downtown Detroit office where he currently works. A slew of colorfully named Detroit bars and clubs — some with stages, some without — and festivals, such as the Detroit Metro Times Blowout in Hamtramck, where Greenleaf has performed for nine consecutive years, have given a young man from a musical family the chance to become a real working performance artist — with a heavy emphasis on the “work” part, which Greenleaf defines as “the Detroit way.”

    “I would say the number of creative people in Detroit who are self-employed and have one or more side jobs is in the very high 90s,” said Greenleaf, who calls his mother, Beverli, a longtime member of the New Bethel Baptist Church choir, his favorite singer and the member of his family who should have been a recording star. “For us who make music, we’re underdogs to begin with. And most of us come into this business not knowing where to record or where to play, so we’re just kind of left to figure it out on our own.

    “We also work hard at our other jobs that allow us to make our music, because at the end of that shift, the prize is that you get to go to the studio or play live somewhere. If you work for Ford Motor Co., you’re expected to be able to do your job. And if you’re an MC, you have to be able to put on a good show. And Detroit creatives take great pride in being able to excel in all of those spaces.”

    Greenleaf, who is also the proud son of Augustus Greenleaf and younger brother of Brian Greenleaf, a music director and educator, says he always takes pride in using his recordings to address social issues that affect him most.

    For example, as Leaf Erikson, Greenleaf used songs titled “Foreclosure,” “Gospel from the North End,” and “H2o” on his 2019 album “A Canvas of Hope” to draw attention to the foreclosure crisis, mental health, and the water crisis in Flint. Then there’s the song “Rescue Mission” on the same album, which emphasizes the importance of getting resources to people in need. Greenleaf says he got the inspiration for the piece from a previous job at DTE Energy, when a woman burst into tears after DTE and COTS provided her with some basic necessities on the same day.

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    “As a creative community in the city, we need to be a reflection of the times; it needs to be more than just a photo op and branding,” said Greenleaf, who calls himself “the regular MC.” “Things that are happening in our community need to be reflected in our work, especially when you’re shouting ‘Detroit’ every chance you get. You go back to Motown in the ‘60s: First, there was a lot of pop music coming out; and then in the ‘60s and into the ‘70s, you had Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder and even The Supremes singing about what was going on in the community and in the world. I can listen to Marvin Gaye’s ‘Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)’ today and the hairs on the back of my neck still stand up.”

    The passion in Greenleaf’s voice when he talked about Marvin Gaye is similar to the tone his friends are used to when Greenleaf is having a heated sports conversation. In fact, Greenleaf says his time as a member of the prep crew, covering high school sports for the Detroit Free Press sports section many years before his Leaf Erikson transformation, is still a part of him with every piece of music he writes or performs.

    “It was by far the best job I ever had,” Greenleaf, a 1994 Cass Tech graduate, said of the part-time job he started on Oct. 30, 1992, at age 15. He fielded phone calls from local high school coaches who called the Free Press with information about their recently completed games, which were then compiled into game recaps and sometimes short stories by members of the prep crew. “On the prep crew, we were mostly a bunch of guys — and a few girls — and we wanted to be writers. We all hoped that we would get that call from the winning coach of the lead game for our roundup, so that our name would get in the paper.

    “That was serious material, but I still approach what I do now as a reporter literally. I want to be able to speak the truth with journalistic integrity.”

    The “old-school” journalist that Greenleaf is at his core had no problem identifying his old friend, Jemele Hill, as the source behind his relationship with the Free Press. Hill put Greenleaf in touch with former Free Press sports editor Gene Myers. It’s the same Jemele Hill with whom Greenleaf once participated in epic dodgeball games on the playground of Pyramid Elementary School and later bowled regularly with in high school at Schaefer Lanes — decades before Hill was a national sportscaster for ESPN. And even as Greenleaf navigates his musical journey, he’s been supported by talented creatives near and far who he heaped praise on July 17, including Dakim, Hugh Whitaker, the late Titus “Baatin” Glover, Troy Davis, Ilajide, Casey van Reyk, DJ Benny Ben, Dj Wise1, Andrew Potvin, “The Butter Made Records Family” and more — including Greenleaf’s fiancée, Laura Shafer; son Korey Greenleaf; and Chris Campbell, host of WDET’s “The Progressive Underground” — Greenleaf says he’s still uniquely inspired by Hill.

    “At Pyramid Elementary, Jemele and I read all the Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume books, and when Jemele started writing, I always liked her style because she was never afraid,” said Greenleaf, who has received 15 Detroit Music Awards nominations as Leaf Erikson, including a 2023 nomination for Outstanding Gospel/Christian Recording for “The New Testament,” which also featured his son, Korey Greenleaf, who performs as D Apollo. “Jemele is never going to let anyone box her in and she’s a huge inspiration to me. Jemele has always been all about Detroit, and I’m the same way.

    “I love my city. And through music that reflects my city, I want to be a better version of myself. Making music is like a therapy session for me. And I am the therapist And the client.”

    Scott Talley is a native Detroiter, a proud product of Detroit Public Schools and a lifelong lover of Detroit culture in all its forms. Now on his second tour with the Free Press, which he read as a child, he is excited and humbled to cover the city’s neighborhoods and the many interesting people who define its diverse communities. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @STalleyfreep. Read more of Scott’s stories at www.freep.com/mosaic/detroit-is/. Help us grow great community-focused journalism by becoming a subscriber.

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