Root Down

Intro

Verse

We built an empire out of gaffer tape and bad calls

Paid the crew in mic feedback and half-price repairs for all

Mike D cracked the code on a cheap cassette deck

Ad-Rock just screamed it out, said, "It'll work, what the heck?"

MCA was the booth Buddha, somewhere between a sermon and a prank

Preaching peace, flipping the world with noise and raw funk

We ain't saints, just stage rats hooked on the mic line

Sold the subway sound and called it sacred design

Chorus

Root down — Take your hat off to that racket we made

To the fans who yelled our names but never got paid

Root down — To the techs who were coffee-stained and tired

Root down — Selling chaos on the twelve-inch we wired

Verse

Salute the interns who rewound the reel for us

Valued the groove way more than they valued the trust

A review called us "white funk tourists" on the page?

Who cares, lost the map, missed the bus, turned a new stage

We flipped the Jazz, we flipped the Funk, then we lost the fight

Threw all the wisdom in the trash and called that sound "Spunk"

Now every kid out there is quoting our old rhymes

I guess irony gets better, like a vintage Fender time

Chorus

Root down — To the janitor who mixed the sound

Root down — To the club owners who yelled, "Turn it down!"

Root down — To the late-night engineers gripping the fader

Root down — To the DJs who spun beats even when broke like a crater

Interlude

Bridge

Used irony as the armor, groove as the glue

Laughed through the lawsuits, survived a decade or two

If there's a stage in heaven, MCA's on delay

Adjusting God's monitor, his fee's a sound called "Break" today

This ain't no reminiscing, this is feedback therapy

Got to spit the thanks, by rhyming with sharp irony

Chorus

Root down — To the ones who overstayed the gig

Root down — That wrong chord we played made the rhythm big

Root down, rise up — They can laugh, but the groove is still alive

Outro

Root down — rise up — Leave a little dust in the mix

"Still funky, still broke, still blessed. ...Peace"