Ten Toes Down: Creating "Tru 2 My Roots," a Certified Bay Anthem With Dee Dot Jones and the Oakland Roots

This is a content collaboration with Urban Pitch, the leading website covering soccer culture.

Dee Dot Jones' "Tru 2 My Roots" is the soundtrack for the Oakland Roots' commitment to The Town. Credit: Oakland Roots

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.

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.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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.

Dee Dot Jones helped reveal the Oakland Roots' secondary kit, which features the same colors as the Oakland Athletics, in the music video for "Tru 2 My Roots." Credit: Oakland Roots

Intelligent Town Music: Bryce Savoy discusses creation of genre paying tribute to Oakland

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 here 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.

Subscribe to KTC Newsletter

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.

Read the full conversation with Dee Dot Jones at UrbanPitch.com.