Rage Against the Machine - Down Rodeo

We hungry but them belly full.

Album: Evil Empire [2nd album]
Recorded: Melbourne, Australia
Genre: Metal, Alternative Metal, Rap Metal
Album Release: April 16th 1996
Length: 5:20
Producer: Rage Against the Machine & Brendan O'Brien
Vocalist: Zach De La Rocha [age 26]
Label: Epic Records [subsidiary of Sony]

Official Audio


Live in Chicago from 1996

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: Over 30 million
YouTube Music: Over 10 million

Credits

Bass, drums, guitar

Details

• Rage Against the Machine, who are from Los Angeles, describe riding down the high income neighbourhood of Rodeo Drive with a shotgun because they are intent on robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. I can only assume the shotgun is to threaten and intimdate because it's difficult to see yourself as a hero if you kill people.
  
  The song is a metaphor for the redistribution of wealth. The people with means waste money on opulent lifestyles while the people without go to bed malnourished and hungry. There is an injustice in such disparity, and in a city of vast wealth differences such as Los Angeles, it must be infuriating for the poor to see so many people have so much while they have little. 'Down Rodeo' mixes street slang with Marxist ideology and social commentary to create a unique blend of rebel music that is conscious of societies ills and wants to change them at the barrel of a shotgun.
  
  'A thousand years they had the tools, we should be taking them' says Zach de la Rocha in reference to taking the guns away from the authorities while also bringing to mind the means of production detailed by Marx.
  
  "Fuck the G-ride, I want the machines that are making them," he continues before stating 'a room full of armed pawns." Pawns in chess can attack the royal pieces and become royalty themselves.
  
  Except, it's all performative. RATM in no meaningful way advocate for real world violence because it would be treasonous if they did and punishable by the death penalty. The record and the media companies the band work with know this, as does the RATM and law enforcement. All parties involved play a game where they know they don't really mean it. It's an artistic expression of feeling and nothing substantive beyond that. The band do engage in boycotts and fundraisers but in their music they ostensibly call for violent, direct action which they don't pursue in real life.
  
  Whereas  '60s and '70s groups like the Black Panthers, who are referenced in this very song, really did mean it and engaged in politically motivated armed conflicts with the police on multiple occassions. What we have now is an echo of that same sentiment but one that's lost all of its veracity and potency. The motions and the rhetoric are the same, but the true intent and the actions are not. The system has made RATM too rich for them to really want militant change. It's ironic that the Trump supporters who stormed the capitol building in January 2021 took more revolutionary action in one day than RATM have since their debult album dropped in 1992.
  
  
• 'Rodeo Drive' sounds as if it features several instruments that weren't used in the recording of the song, most notably a turntable. It's evidence of the bands musical ability that they can use their tools to make such a varied soundscape when really it's a basic drums, bass, and guitar setup. However, seeing Tom Morello play his guitar live is to marvel at a technical virtuosity rarely seen and the other instrumentalists are not far behind.
  
  The sheer amount of different sounds Morello can produce with a guitar is amazing and he achieves such noises by using pedals, distortion, feedback, and a pickup selector to modify each note as it plays. The fact he can produce such work in the studio is one thing but to replicate it live is another. For my money, Morello has to be one of the greatest guitarists, in not just metal, but all music.
  
  
• In the song, RATM reiterate their belief that voting will not change the political system 'the structure is set, you never change it with a ballot pull.' This suggests that the only viable option is political violence.
• The lyric 'we hungry but them belly full' is the title of a song by Bob Marley.
  
  

Artwork