The official anthem of the Oakland Roots, Dee Dot Jones’ “Tru 2 My Roots,” can be heard blaring at all of the club’s home matches at the Oakland Coliseum. In a conversation with the artist, we get insight into the making of the track, and his unmistakable ties to the Oakland community.
The Oakland Roots continue to hold down The Town. The club hosted its 2025 regular season home opener over the weekend to a crowd of 26,575, selling out the Oakland Coliseum and setting a team attendance record. The turnout, while nearly unprecedented for a second division American team, is not an anomaly and certainly isn’t a fluke. It’s a product of everything the Roots have done to connect with the community since forming in 2018.
Whether it’s hosting events, forming partnerships with Oakland-based businesses, initiatives, and public figures, or simply embracing everything that makes Oakland unique, the Roots have been engrained into the fabric of The Town. Anyone who’s followed the club over the years shouldn’t have been surprised at the record-breaking attendance in its first game at the Coliseum.
Now more than ever, it’s been refreshing to see a team stand ten toes down in Oakland, as the city has seen a sports exodus from organizations that had long called it home. The NBA’s Golden State Warriors went across the bridge to San Francisco in 2019, the NFL’s Raiders moved to Las Vegas in 2020, and the MLB’s Athletics followed their footsteps by throwing up the deuces this season.
Fully embracing their role as one of the few professional sports teams left in the city, the Roots unveiled their 2025 secondary kit, featuring the green and yellow of the freshly departed A’s, via a music video for Dee Dot Jones’ “Tru 2 My Roots.”
In the visual, the Oakland-based artist puts on for his hometown in a big way. He bounces through the parking lots of the historic Oakland Coliseum, where he was basically potty trained as a kid, and spits his rhymes on the actual pitch, which has hosted multiple World Series and the hearts of The Town’s sports fans since the 1960s. He’s joined by scraper cars and turf dancers and is wearing a soccer net jacket made by Oakland designer Chrisbaby Ferrara.
“Tru 2 My Roots” was a decade in the making. Dee Dot Jones has witnessed the team’s rise from its beginnings in its inaugural season in 2019 and persevered with the Roots through turf troubles when they played at Laney College. He first connected with club co-founder Edreece Arghandiwal, who is also heavily involved in the local music scene, before the team was established. Arghandiwal has made sure that music is essential to the Roots’ identity.
“Music is a big part of my DNA,” Arghandiwal said on the Urban Pitch Podcast in 2022. “It’s a big part of our game day experience. We play a lot of amazing music at our games and we do it unapologetically. We bump super loud and some people get upset about that. But it’s how do we take a game day experience and turn it into something that, A, people remember but, B, tied to the culture, arts and identity of where they’re staying at, where they rest their head every night. It has to feel familiar, otherwise, you ain’t got something authentic.”
Dee Dot Jones falls right in line with that. About a year ago, he had the idea for the hyphy “Tru 2 My Roots” and whipped it up in a night. He texted the track to Arghandiwal, who loved it. The team has played Jones’ music on game days in the past, but this song needed its own higher designation. So it became the season anthem.
The moment is a “dream come true” for Dee Dot, who is friends with Bay Area staples and HBK founders IAMSU! and P-Lo. He takes the responsibility of representing The Town very seriously as he’s seen his contemporaries do.
Oakland has experienced high highs and low lows. While other teams up and leave, the Roots want to bring the people hope and ensure the community that they are, well, rooted. That message was on full display last Saturday for their home opener and debut at the Oakland Coliseum.
Urban Pitch spoke with Dee Dot Jones about the making of “Tru 2 My Roots,” his memories at the Coliseum, and the importance of connecting with the community.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
Urban Pitch: I know you have a long-standing relationship with the Oakland Roots and with club co-founder Edreece Arghandiwal, but what came together to do the “Tru 2 My Roots” anthem?
Dee Dot Jones: I’ve been with the Roots organization since the beginning. Edreece has been a real big benefactor in my life as far as music. He was in the music industry in some sorts before when I was real, real young. He was always there to offer guidance and opportunity. It just presented itself.
Through the years, I’ve always had songs play during the games, but wanted to do something special. So it was about around this time last year, where one night, I just made it. And that morning, just texted it over to him, and he said, “We’re running it every game.” And it still stands true.
It’s a surreal opportunity. But I think it came together in divine timing, and couldn’t ask for a better outcome.
It really did start like so, so long ago, nearly a decade. But I think that it really culminates into how important good ideas and good people are. And I’m very, very fortunate to have those both in my life.
We can’t plan some of these things sometimes. It’s just Divine Alignment.
I always like to say, you got to meet in the middle to make compromises with God. Especially if you want everything to be exactly how you want, it’s never going to be that way. It’s always going to be something better. You gotta leave in a little room for surprise.
I couldn’t be more surprised by everything that’s going on. Even for my part, my impact, it’s definitely something I can see visibly in my community. It’s been a wild ride these past five years, going from Laney College all the way to the Oakland Coliseum, it’s been a lot of progression, a lot of growth and a lot of unity.
I think that the way that we’ve progressed, it really does speak for the intentions and the overall acceptance, and the progress of not just this organization, but the city.
It’s an exciting time. What was it like filming the video, being on the field? You had the scrapers and the dancers. You can’t deny it’s Oakland. What was that like?
Oh yeah, unapologetically. We didn’t leave anything out. I know that for sure. I brought five of my closest friends and pulled up to the same parking lot where I had my first tailgate when I was like 5. I learned how to potty train there for God’s sakes. My first concert was NSYNC at the Oakland Arena.
This is a very, very, very special moment. Edreece and the team spearheaded this whole thing and I didn’t really know what to expect until I saw it. And it couldn’t have came out more perfect. It really was divine.
The day before we shot, it was pouring rain, and then as soon as we got out to the parking lot, there was a peek of sunlight. And the sun stayed throughout the whole shoot. I don’t know if I’ve ever been on the field, except for maybe like a firework show once or twice. Definitely the whole experience was just something I couldn’t trade for the world. But if I ever get to do it again, it’s gonna be hard to top that one.
You did it all out. You have to do it to the fullest when you have the opportunity.
That’s how we do it over here. We had such an amazing group of people that was on that team, Calvin Gaskin (Director of Media), my boys from TURFinc, and then we had the car guys, my OGs pulled up with the low riders.
It culminated into something where we all knew where we wanted to take it. And we kind of also knew where this was going to go, because it was for something of that magnitude. That probably was my first real production that was totally me. I’ve been on some big video shoots playing the background. But for that to happen, it was something that definitely we want to represent in the way that not only makes a splash for our community, and is reminiscent of all the culture that Oakland brings, but also as a representation for the rest of the world to see what we’re about, to see what we have.
As of lately, we’re taken for granted, especially with the mismanagement of a lot of these teams in our area, as well as a lot of these problems that we have dealing with Oakland today as a whole. I think that this is a very, very optimistic symbol. There’s just so much culture that you can’t deny that there’s something about this town.
How did you get into soccer?
I never grew up playing soccer, but my cousins did. A lot of my family. I have like 30 cousins, they all played soccer. I went to national championships in Las Vegas with them, and I just grew up watching it.
I became a fan watching the sport because I had an in on it. Of course, it’s the world’s game. It’s definitely ingrained into a lot of this culture and humanity. And there’s a thing about it where I love the way that it’s more than a spectator sport where it’s involvement. It’s unifying. It’s a universal thing. I really got into it through my family. And it’s funny, I’ve been talking to them about it, like, all those games I was watching them, all the games I used to watch as a kid, and I really paid off this time.
That’s how I got into it, very early, but definitely now more than ever I’m in it for real. I’m telling all my friends. I’m like, “Hey guys, we’re soccer people now, we’re football people now. Get your Sambas on, we’re getting together, we’re gonna hit the pitch.” It’s really something special for me to be involved in all of this so fast and so fluidly. I know when it comes down to it, I owe it all to my family growing up for sure. I would go everywhere they went for all these games. It’s definitely paying off now, because I give them all these tickets to these games. It’s cool.
You’re paying it forward to them. It means so much when you’re rooting for your family.
Honestly, that’s the best part is even the supporters’ groups for the Roots, they’ve treated me like family since the very beginning. It’s just something that’s really sentimental about what we’re not just providing, but what we’re able to share together.
And this community-building, it’s bigger than the sport. It’s really the heart. And I think that’s really what drove me to all these lengths, to be able to succeed with them and fail with them. I love it. I’ve grown fond of it a lot more over the years, being on the sidelines, seeing it, and knowing these players and really where they came from, and how hard they’ve worked. It’s really hard. It’s a hard sport, you know. You gotta run. We’re running for freedom, not for fear.
That’s a bar, right there. What are some of your musical influences? This song is very Bay Area hip-hop, but you have some rock and some ethereal moments throughout your music.
Man, I can’t lie, a lot of it’s inspired by just the eclecticism of my community of Oakland itself. You have so many things that come out of here. I’ve never been afraid to gather what I believed in my truth and just been able to exact it in my will. And I’m good at it too.
“Tru 2 My Roots” definitely, it’s reminiscent of my older friends from the HBK gang, their sound. So IAMSU!, P-Lo, Dave Steezy, Skipper, all those guys. It’s very Bay Area. We got Too Short performing at halftime this Saturday. I’m a student of it. And I’ve definitely been very fortunate to have worked with a lot of these people that I grew up listening to and become contemporaries with so many people that I almost idolized growing up.
And I think that’s where it comes from. It comes from seeing what really is the feeling of it? When you’re driving in traffic, I’m hearing my friends every day in my life on the radio or out the car. And so I wanted to bring something that was not just an homage, but that brought a sense of flavor that was my own. And I think that adding that is kind of what makes this such a polarizing and exciting sound especially for the team, especially for the energy of what we bring in, what we represent.
It’s crazy because I did the whole song in a night. I do all my own music. I produce, I engineer all my own music. I do all that stuff. But being able to do that and text it to Edreece that morning and having it run every home game until now, it’s a dream come true. I think I found my place in the city’s history going forward, and I take the responsibility with honor.
And not only that, it’s great to score some points for my community and score some points for my friends. Because I wouldn’t have done it without them. A lot of these people that I grew up listening to are a text away now, and it’s been an outpouring of so much pride from them. And it’s definitely something that is very just. It feels like justice. It feels like the right thing to do when you hear the song. That’s kind of like the reason why I love it and the reason why I’m pretty sure everyone loves it too.
Will you be at the home opener next week?
Man, of course. I’m bringing all my cousins. I’m bringing all my friends. Check the score. We’re at like, 18,000 tickets sold right now and counting. We’re celebrating a renaissance, especially for Oakland. We’re celebrating a renaissance right now in not just culture, but in our ideology and what we can do together, because we are all we have. Especially in any turbulent time, no matter what, it’s always gonna happen, there’s always gonna have the dichotomy where the goodness of not just the sport, but the sentiment of why we show up anyways will be celebrated. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
It’s hard to put in words how proud I am of everyone involved, especially my big brother Edreece. We have taken such an intentional belief in what the goodness can do and what we can do as far as bringing this to the people, and not only that, but like bringing this to the fans, and then growing that ecosystem from there. That’s what’s next on my mind is like, what can I do, how can I get the youth more involved? How can I get the nonprofits more involved? And we’re very, very, very adamant about that. Meeting on the same type of wavelength, it’s a home opener, but we’re here to say. I think that’s very evident.
Is there anything else you’d like to make sure we cover or talk about?
I’m just so glad that I’m able to implement every part of this culture in there from the fashion, from Almost Alchemy from my friend Chrisbaby Ferrara. I’m just glad that I’m able to represent in a way that makes memories that can hold this weight.
This is still surreal, and I’m still kind of getting used to having to explain everything that’s going on with me. Myself, I have no clue. It’s bewildering. I’m at a loss of words every time. Just have to figure out how to find them.
And I’m glad that I can share it with Oakland, because I know even this part of like, what I’m doing, at the end of the day, it’s just a song, but what it represents to me, for the team, this is gonna carry on something very spectacular.
I almost have like a blind faith. I can’t wait for the home opener. Can’t wait to continue the season. I know it just started. We’re gonna keep this going, and we’re gonna bring this sport out now to Oakland so that we can become one with the community. That’s all we want to do is make sure that we have sports in Oakland, period. And that’s a beautiful thing. Because I couldn’t ask for more than for us to at least have a shot at believing in something.
Photography courtesy of Oakland Roots.
