How Rising Rapper Dee Dot Jones Made the Oakland Roots’ New Anthem

Dee Dot Jones went to the Oakland Coliseum complex for so many A’s, Raiders and Warriors games as a kid, he says he was basically potty trained in the parking lot. Since all three teams left Oakland, the Coliseum is now the site of a huge come-up for another local squad: Oakland Roots Soccer Club, which will play its first home game of the season there on March 22, after years of competing at California State University East Bay. Jones, who performed at the Roots’ halftime show last season, is the voice of the team’s new anthem, “Tru 2 My Roots.”

In the new music video for the track, Jones raps on the same Coliseum field he once could only peer at from the bleachers. Turf dancers contort their arms in back-breaking dance moves. Roots players put on their game faces. Old-school cars with gleaming rims swing donuts in a display of Town pride.

“Even to have been on the field in that context is a very surreal moment,” Jones says.

Coming up with an anthem bold enough to hype up an entire stadium might sound like a challenge. But Jones says the track came together entirely organically. The rapper’s connection to the Roots goes way back. A decade ago, the Oakland-raised Jones met future Roots co-founder Edreece Arghandiwal, who let Jones record music in the office of his tech start-up. They kept in touch and remained close over the years.

In April 2024, the night before the Roots’ last home opener, Jones went to the studio and recorded what would become “Tru 2 My Roots.” He sent it to Arghandiwal. “He just wanted to run it,” Jones says. “It was just all by surprise. It was pretty much all just improvised.”

Now, the track will blast through the Coliseum speakers as Roots players jog onto the field. It’s just the latest example of the Bay Area’s cross-pollination between sports and hip-hop. Too $hort will perform at halftime during the Roots’ home opener on March 22. Along with Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong, the rap legend also recently purchased an ownership stake in another upstart team, the Ballers, who began competing in the Pioneer baseball league last year.

E-40 — whose 2014 song “Choices” is an unofficial Golden State Warriors anthem — has become a high-profile supporter of the Bay Area’s new WNBA team, the Golden State Valkyries, whose debut season begins at Chase Center in May. The Warriors also recently launched a music and film division, Golden State Entertainment, which teamed up with San Francisco label EMPIRE to put out P-Lo’s latest album, For the Soil, the soundtrack of last month’s NBA All-Star Weekend.

While sports teams and local pride go hand in hand, the Roots take repping Oakland a step further. Since their beginnings in 2018, community service is baked into what they do. The Roots and their sister team, Oakland Soul, work with a long list of youth sports leagues, after-school arts programs and organizations that champion gender and racial equity.

Soccer might not be as popular in the U.S. as it is in other parts of the world, but there are plenty of immigrant diasporas in Oakland from Latin America, the Arab world, Africa and Asia who grew up with a deep love of the sport. And with several other sports leagues now gone from Oakland, the Roots have an opportunity to expand appreciation for soccer and its culture in the Town as the team grows.

Jones is here for it. “The story that we’re telling is definitely my favorite part of it,” he says.