There's no good rule of thumb on how long you should wait before it's okay to cover an iconic song in the city that the song has come to represent, or by an artist that has come to represent the city. Justin Bieber could have gotten away with covering "Detroit Rock City" by KISS when he stopped in Michigan's biggest city. He may have even been able to get away with a Stevie Wonder Motown hit. But it was going to be tough for the pop star to pull off Eminem's "Lose Yourself" while playing in front of the rapper's home crowd.
Bieber, having probably garnered some practice from his housemates Lil Twist and Lil Za, decided that he could perform at least one verse of the song despite Eminem's possession of what Kanye West might describe as "New God Flow." It took Bieber exactly one line to screw up the lyrics, rapping to the crowd that his "palms are heavy," versus to original "palms are sweaty." Admittedly, the idea of having heavy palms is intriguing, especially to Baltimore Ravens fans watching T.J. Houshmandzadeh dropping first-down passes in the 2011 AFC divisional playoffs.
After the first error, Bieber managed to get through the rest of the verse without screwing up, although his flow (or lack thereof) and stereotypical rapping hand gestures were amusing. He probably could have gotten away with doing the rest of the song, as the crowd seemed to eat it up. But then again, the fans at the sold-out Joe Louis Arena were probably the only people in Detroit that don't regularly listen to Eminem (slight exaggeration).
The more newsworthy drama was when Bieber's bus driver was cited for possession of marijuana when the vehicle was passing into Windsor, Ontario. Bieber, dealing with enough drama, was not on the bus.
