Fishbone Serenade Donald Trump With New Song ‘Racist Piece of S-it’

Christopher Dowd, a founding member of Fishbone who plays keys and trombone in the group, knew he had to write a song about Donald Trump close to a decade ago when Trump first announced he was running for president. Now as another election day approaches, and Trump is on the ballot again, Fishbone are releasing “Racist Piece of Shit,” aka “RxPxOxS.” On the song, Fishbone call out proud boys, tiki torchbearers, Kid Rock, and the “mad orange king” … and that’s just in the first verse of the ska-leaning song whose chorus goes, “Oh, you’re just a racist piece of shit.”

“The timing of this release couldn’t be more perfect,” Dowd tells Rolling Stone via email. “With Election Day five days away, maybe hearing this song, if you are ‘undecided,’ will trigger your subconscious to think about who could win and what that would look like to the country and the world. One person in a leadership position can automatically make you guilty by association. So will you want to be associated and represented by a person with non-apologetic racist tendencies or a person that doesn’t?”

Trump has been on Dowd’s radar since the late Eighties when Trump took out a full-page ad in the New York Daily News, calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty to punish the so-called Central Park Five — five young Black men accused of raping and attempting to murder a jogger in Central Park. The men were later exonerated of the crime and this year have sued Trump for defamation.

“With Fishbone being six Black men who grew up in L.A. in the Chief Daryl Gates era, we knew all too well that [Trump’s allegations against the Central Park Five] sounded like bullshit,” Dowd says. “And that’s when Donald Dickhead took out pre-trial, full-page ads in NYC’s major newspapers. … I knew the feeling intimately having survived gang violence, drugs, unemployed family struggling with trying to provide for themselves. … So on a community level I understood.”

Dowd says he included the lyric about Kid Rock in the song because the rapper and Trump supporter was just another “culture vulture.” “Man, just look at that video he put up after Trump had the assassination attempt at that rally: ‘You fuck with Trump, you fuck with me,’” Dowd says. “That shit was hilarious… Get the fuck out of here.”

Dowd hopes a song like Fishbone’s “RxPxOxS” will stoke discussion and provoke critical thinking. “Musicians and artists using their platform to speak their truth is as old as language itself,” he says. “When it’s a non-person of color, it’s ‘protest music,’ when it’s a person of color, it’s ‘aggressive.’ So historically, we have tried to put it to a beat that will make you dance while you think. … What’s sad about it all is that we have been writing songs like this since the Eighties and they are still as relevant today as they were then. Maybe that can change soon.”

Fishbone plan on releasing a new album, tentatively titled Stockholm Syndrome, with more “first person observations of the current state of the world” in 2025. Before the record comes out, though, he hopes people will think critically before they vote.

And if someone is still considering voting for Trump, Dowd has a number of questions he’d ask them: “I would ask anyone whether you support someone politically of any affiliated party, ‘What do you stand for?’” he says. “What is important to you? Is money more important than human life? Take a look at yourself and really look at what you stand for?”