Slice ʻn Dice

Pineapples get cropped, sugarcane gets chopped Tell me, who gets cooked in the melting pot? When the wai doesn’t flow, then kalo corms rot Tell me, who gets cooked in the melting pot? In the plantation system, criminals on top Tell me, who gets cooked in the melting pot? Working hard all day, while the sun is hot Tell me, who gets cooked in the melting pot? They dammed up the rivers to let the cash flow And planted sugarcane erasing loʻi kalo Made a killing off the land and the people that they stole So hereʻs a piece of history I bet you didn’t know The people came to Hawaiʻi cuz the US went there first Colonized their homeland to erase them from this earth Then coerced POC to work terrible conditions And made it look easy just to obscure our vision A fairytale of peace still plagues our islands And in their melting pot is the erasure of Hawaiians What you think you know is just a fabricated myth A nostalgia for a life that didn’t exist Cause drove after drove and ship after ship They were passing those fists and they were cracking those whips People died during intense labor riots So don’t you ever forget plantation politics is violence Pineapples get cropped, sugarcane gets chopped Tell me, who gets cooked in the melting pot? When the wai doesn’t flow, then kalo corms rot Tell me, who gets cooked in the melting pot? In the plantation system, criminals on top Tell me, who gets cooked in the melting pot? Working hard all day, while the sun is hot Tell me, who gets cooked in the melting pot? The Poi Dog is born in a cultural storm Of the good bad ugly and a past that is torn Overlapped in oppression as a hazardous tone Of controlled destabilization separate host from home Plantation owners raise they glass in toast Way of life, cut by cane knife left to roast ʻĀina on fiya from coast to coast As immigrant and kānaka left to drown or float Here’s my pain, yeah it hurts Gave my name for this work Ain’t no freedom on this Earth And the season is upon us And I’m breathing in the dirt But my actions always honest what I carried from my birth Like I carry sugarcane for the name on my shirt The same name responsible for treasonous work On the crown overthrown now conditions is worse Left my home in the past, I’ll never go back I left the bones of my ancestors under attack For the chance for my children to live and survive I had to bury my heart but my body’s alive Indentured to the crops and these 12-hour days A migrant to Kanaka lands stolen away, stolen away, stolen away Pineapples get cropped, sugarcane gets chopped Tell me who gets cooked in the melting pot? When the wai doesnʻt flow, then kalo corms rot Tell me who gets cooked in the melting pot? In the plantation system, criminals on top Tell me who gets cooked in the melting pot? Working hard all day, while the sun is hot Tell me who gets cooked in the melting pot? The plantation is run by white supremacists That leaves me pissed, let’s organize a shift We used to working hard but not like this Taking these licks, here comes the way of the fist Backfill the loʻi to plant pineapple Fist in the soil as my mind time travels No hana too hard, nothing we can’t handle When you can’t import, food is the ammo From all around the world, now in similar positions Sampling each other's words, now we all speak pidgin And we follow instructions that lead to destruction And turns fertile lands into construction Hāpai kō, the work is back-breaking And diverting water leaves the ʻāina devastated E pekupeku kākou till we leave da plantation To work to go home until the Kingdom’s reinstated