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I took an informal poll recently among a few friends and IM acquaintances and asked what came to mind when I said "Baltimore." John Waters, The Wire and Michael Phelps were the most common answers (that's what I would have said too), which I suppose means nothing except that we all watch a lot of TV. The point I'm trying to make here is that none of those things were on Aaron Lacrate's list. That's because he's from there.

I took an informal poll recently among a few friends and IM acquaintances and asked what came to mind when I said "Baltimore." John Waters, The Wire and Michael Phelps were the most common answers (that's what I would have said too), which I suppose means nothing except that we all watch a lot of TV. The point I'm trying to make here is that none of those things were on Aaron Lacrate's list. That's because he's from there.

Read about Aaron Lacrate's Baltimore, and watch Part I of this Rock Star Guide to the Galaxy episode here.

The relationship between hip hop and politics can be just as polarizing as the music sometimes is. For artists like Public Enemy -- with songs such as "Fight the Power," which helped shed light on largely ignored problems in the black community -- hip-hop and politics mixed like water and Kool-Aid. But when artists like Ludacris record controversial songs like "Politics as Usual" (which shows support for Obama by using profane language to sip on the senator's opponents), those perfect bedfellows can suddenly repel each other like water and oil.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick saw both sides. When the Michigan Democratic House leader was elected mayor of Detroit in 2002, he was readily identified as, for all intents and purposes, a member of the hip-hop community. He was an African-American, a ripe 31 years old. He wore a stunning diamond stud earring and readily admitted to being a rap fan. He even used lyrics from rap songs when he was campaigning. Comedian Chris Rock was the one who originally dubbed Kilpatrick the "Hip Hop Mayor," and many hip-hop heads were ecstatic about Kilpatrick's impending term at that point in time.

Hidden next to I-75 in Troy, just south of the Big Beaver Road exit, they sit, surrounded by strip malls, corporate high-rises and recently constructed apartment complexes. What we're looking at is a smattering of old farmhouses -- some still heated by oil furnaces and kerosene heaters -- on a two-block stretch of dirt and gravel road accessible only through an abutting parking lot.

Standing in stark opposition to its recently overly developed surroundings, one has the eerie feeling that this rural enclave won't be here much longer. But even after the last old homestead has been mercilessly uprooted and the final skyscraper is finished -- indeed after even it meets its bitter end -- one aspect of Troy's countrified past will remain, and that is its status as the hometown of Clix Records, one of the most elusive, seamless and sought-after imprints in all of early rock 'n' roll. Those now-ancient abodes once housed the early Michigan label.

Every picture tells a story," some dude sang ages ago. That's certainly the case with Little Sonny Willis, the "new king of the blues harmonica" and one of Detroit's most unsung musical legends, who's documented damn near every facet of his life with photographs while, by association, also documenting the Detroit blues music scene of the past four decades.

"Both my grandmother and my mother were pack rats," Willis says, sitting and reminiscing in the basement of his lovely Detroit home, all blue and white outside, including the all-terrain carpet leading up the walk to his front door. The basement could serve as a Michigan blues museum of sorts -- although John Penney, music expert and director of Farmington Hills' American Music Research Foundation, says only Willis' immediate circle of family and friends have ever seen the archives. In fact, he claims the artist himself hasn't looked at most of this archival treasure since his wife died 12 years ago.