| The Offspring – Come Out And Play Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Oh yeah, look up the band history and Dexter (lead singer). He's from California. He went to college at USC, which is in Los Angeles. | |
| The Offspring – Come Out And Play Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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There's a lot more to this song than what you're just hearing. It's very in tune with the gang culture of California. "You gotta keep 'em separated!" - that's a play on the Mexican gang OGs. They run the gangs on the street level, that's how the Mexican bangers talk. It's pretty much an exclusive accent to the West Coast. You probably won't hear that out in Colorado or West Virginia. It's also funny because it's the same mentality used in the penitentiaries, separated by race. "Take him out" - that's also a play on the gangs. As I mentioned previously, there is social pressure from the gangs for kids to do shit. So "take him out" is like an order. I've lived in shitty areas and I've literally seen a kid laying in his own blood from getting shot - a Mexican lowrider was blocked off by the police - it was next to a notorious local gang club - where all the MS13 hung out at. The older guys give the kids orders. The kids all fight each other too, even within the gang. "You're under 18 you won't be doing any time" is something the older guys that have been to prison tell the younger kids - even without the older guys, it's the mentality among the gangs. "Come out and play!" - Sometimes the gangs will literally go to someones house, to their front yard and call them out. The lifestyle is called "a game", but it's not a game, it's real life. So this is how these kids are playing, by killing each other. I actually lived in the murder capital of the US in 1993, which was San Bernadino. People got shot there all the time. The early 90's was the height of Southern California gang violence. It's spread though, now, up North more - so now it occupies almost every major city on the West Coast. "Getting weapons with the greatest of ease" - in areas like this, it's so easy for kids to get guns. "The gangs stake their own campus locales" - that's the gang turf. Don't go there if you're not part of the gang. "And if they catch you slippin' then it's all over pal If one guy's colors and the other's don't mix" - if the gangs sense any sort of fear in you, or think that you don't belong in the area, you're going to get hurt. If you so much as look at someone wrong, you're being disrespectful. So many people get killed for being mistaken as rival gang members. A lot of the times for the gangs it's just about seeking out that thrill. I've known people that were unaffiliated, walking home at night, a car pulls up on them while they're on the corner, rolls down the window, and blows their head off. I've heard of innocent girls getting shot too, just by poorly aimed bullets. I've almost been shot myself walking home from work. It's a huge cultural difference between these areas and the rest of the United States. It's almost normalized, but you would all know the difference like night and day if it were suddenly one day injected into your community. It's a great song, but really sad. |
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