Lyrics: Gordon Tsai
Music: Gordon Tsai
A lot of corner stores, a couple laundromats
You ever wonder why Asian businesses follow track
Maybe its the gas-station owners or the restaurant
Serving exotic artifacts marketed with a racist font
It's called survival mode, which came from yellow peril
And all our immigrants took jobs labeled feminine
Hold it for just a second, the strongest people i knew
I'm talking all of em, are confident, my grandmother, were all women
It's just the jobs that needed filling the most
So don't confuse the given labels with the strength of the show
For those who did make it past, the Chinese exclusion act
Set up shop to send some back, worked the wok and made it slap
Cooked their way into the fabric of Americana
Stitches on the outline embroidered it as a badge of honor
That's how our culture intertwined with the nation
The patience of the first generation laying foundations..
This for our history, a slice of Americana
Shout out to all of the grandfathers who walked with honor
Took all the prejudice and hammered on the railroad tracks
Built a new foundation so that I could pen this type of track
This for our history, a slice of Americana
Shout out to all of my grandmama's who kept us stronger
Held it down through all the restaurants and holidays
Gathered round the table I reflect like it was yesterday
You got some engineers, a couple lawyers also
I love my doctors with doctorates who practice riding solo
Some took the route of being entrepreneurs
While others walked the street of finance let investments mature
I wonder if our parents constant nagging altered us
I wonder if their sacrifice was what inspired us
Taking the journey over with little to start from nothing
To give it to all their children to have a better beginning
Hmm... i guess the vehicle of schooling
Was using it as a tool to get out of a real oppression
And that's not all of us, I'm drilling to the root of it
The causes of the ripples the background to why we're doing this
I'm not a dentist, I wasn't an academic
I did have a desire to capture my life aesthetics
Tt happens to be through music, and i'm not the only artist
Take a look around i raise a toast to how we started
This for our history, a slice of Americana
Shout out to all of the grandfathers who walked with honor
Took all the prejudice and hammered on the railroad tracks
Built a new foundation so that I could pen this type of track
This for our history, a slice of Americana
Shout out to all of my grandmama's who kept us stronger
Held it down through all the restaurants and holidays
Gathered round the table I reflect like it was yesterday
Here goes a question that derived from insecurity
"How do you keep the power with majors and not minorities?"
First, let's make a system with a pecking order layout
Then you elevate a group with cash in other words you pay out
Keep them working silent, and reinforce that behavior
You tell em you're doing great and you write em up in the papers
Now the other groups will envy all the things that they get
Still oppressed but we call it 'model minority myth'
Let em think they winning but we'll stop em with a glass ceiling
Class ending, take these notes and pass em to your own children
Never buck the system, never bite the hand that feeds you
Keep you playing as our robin batman standing on the steeple
We'll say they're passive and they're better in supportive roles
Really that isn't true but the story will fit our narrative
Yes, it is imperative we stick to the script
Before the people find out the truth that this is all just a myth
This for our history, a slice of Americana
Shout out to all of the grandfathers who walked with honor
Took all the prejudice and hammered on the railroad tracks
Built a new foundation so that I could pen this type of track
This for our history, a slice of Americana
Shout out to all of my grandmama's who kept us stronger
Held it down through all the restaurants and holidays
Gathered round the table I reflect like it was yesterday