Lansing’s hometown tourist

Halatu Musa showcases city’s ‘hidden gems’

When Ragis “Halatu” Musa plans vacations with her friends, her travel brochures are TikToks.

Especially during a lingering Michigan winter, those short, picturesque videos of influencers around the world showcasing shops, restaurants and other “hidden gems” are just tailor-made to feed vacation cravings.

Musa, a Lansing resident since age 3, has long wanted to recreate what she saw in those videos. The dream? She wanted to move to a big city and live that fabulous TikTok lifestyle after graduating from college in 2019.

That didn’t happen.

First there was the lockdown.

Then, the realization that her family, friends and other loved ones were all in Lansing.

A travel binge in 2021 showed Musa many of the sights she’d been craving while being cramped inside. She even started making some travel content herself. At the end, she came back — but she kept making those travel videos. Minus the travel.

“Whenever I travel, when I go to look up places to eat or things to do, I always go on TikTok,” she said. “But I’m like, we have none of that in Lansing. No one is doing that.”

It was a revelation.

The lack of recognizable influencers showcasing Lansing didn’t mean there was nothing to do.

It just meant the interesting spots were harder to find.

They were ready for their spotlight.

And so was Musa.

In late 2021, she focused her tourist’s eye on her own home city, making the sorts of videos that had always fueled her dreams of moving somewhere else. Since early 2025, she’s been taking videos more seriously, accumulating about 10,000 followers on TikTok (where she can be found at @outragis33) and modest but loyal followings on other platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

“I saw, like, that wasn’t a thing, and I was like, why not try it?” she said.

Step behind the camera, to watch Musa record and it’s clear how she pulls it off.

As she showcased Nubian, an African fashion and cultural shop downtown, she strides in with positive expectations: She turns it on and is smiling well before she even enters the building.

She glides quickly and quietly (her iconic “Hey y’all, it’s your girl Halatu” will be recorded later, after editing). She takes videos and photos of eye-catching items that she always places carefully back.

That energy is a core part of Musa’s brand, and not just because she sometimes uploads positivity-focused content alongside the usual fare.

“It’s never about the place, it’s always about the people. If you have good people with you, the place doesn’t matter.”

“Whatever you do in life, just make sure at the end of the day you are happy. Life is way too short for stress and unhappiness.”

“If yall ever see me in public please say hi!! I get so excited to see yall”

“Every day may not be good but there is something good in every day.”

— Recent positivity content from Musa.

 

Dreams are to be lived and showcased, not reviewed

Musa considers herself a “showcaser,” not a “reviewer.”

Her opinions are honest, but she sets herself up by always going in with the expectation that she’ll enjoy herself. And usually, she does.

“I feel like there’s beauty in anything, and if you’re going in there thinking negative about the store, you’re most likely gonna find something negative,” she said. “So I go in there with more of a positive mindset to show what is unique and different in these individual stores, rather than looking for something that I don’t want to see.”

While Musa’s reviews aren’t fully glowing — a recent restaurant video describes one menu item as “just okay,” for instance — they’re always somewhat positive, usually beginning with Musa telling audiences that the place was highly recommended by locals.

Those recommendations make Musa’s relationship with her audience symbiotic. For every viewer who learns about a new spot from her videos, another has a new place to recommend that she’s never heard of before. The comments under her food videos are littered with nods of knowing agreement and lists of curious recommendations.

“I don’t have a thing that draws me somewhere,” she said. “I listen to what people tell me. I might post a Mexican restaurant, and then everyone else is like, ‘Oh, if you like that one, go here.’ So I take recommendations.”

Musa’s videos aren’t her primary source of income. In fact, they’re not a source of income at all. Asked how she profits from her work as an influencer, Musa just laughed.

“I don’t,” she said. “I don’t make any profit. I’m just doing this for fun. It started as a hobby, and now people are watching it.”

Many of Musa’s food videos are recorded on her lunch, taking a break of sorts from her day job in event planning. Her visits aren’t coordinated with business owners, and she spends her own money on items. That means the food videos couldn’t exist without her spending money, but she usually buys at least one item wherever she goes, out of a desire to support the business.

But even if the whole Lansing-tourist-as-a-local showcase has yet to turn a profit, Musa is glad to share her dreams. Not only does it help residents and visitors find more things to do, it’s helped Musa herself realize the city’s business scene is a lot bigger and more diverse than many lifelong residents like her ever bothered to give it credit for.

“There’s so many unique shops that we’ve never heard of, or that are in our city that we’ve never seen,” she said. “So I feel like this experience helped me realize that the city is large. There are so many parts of the city that I’ve never seen before.”

It’s something Musa finds particularly important, because “we all talk real bad when it comes to Lansing.”

Coming out of the lockdown, she said, many locals stopped going out often, missing the chance to discover the new restaurants, shops and other spots that have opened or reopened in recent years. She hears people insist there isn’t anything to do in the area.

“I wanted to show beautiful parts of Lansing and kind of showcase what we have, rather than saying that Lansing doesn’t have anything,” she said. “Because we do have a lot.”

That doesn’t just mean businesses. Musa’s desire to try (and document) all the city has to offer has, in recent memory, led her to attend an MSU hockey game, compete in Quality Dairy’s yearly pączki eating contest (she was credited with two, said she only finished one in five minutes, but still enjoyed herself) and be a guest on a podcast hosted at recording studio Crack House Studios.

To those people who say Lansing doesn’t have anything to do, Musa recommends getting out there the way she did.

For those in need of ideas, her videos are a good start.

“Get out there and explore,” she said. “I feel like after COVID, a lot of us kind of got used to staying at home, doordashing, or like not really going out there. So I would say to go out there and explore. Like, the place is big and it’s beautiful. And it’s just waiting on us to go and see it.”