Drawn Lines

Muckraker's hip-hop production gives the story the weight of a front-page exclusive — journalism you can feel in your chest. Lines like "But she remembers Selma, she remembers sixty-five," anchor the track in specifics that generic coverage misses. The mood — intense — reflects the emotional reality behind the numbers. Every Majik's Studio news track exists to make you feel the story, not just read it.

[verse 1] They redraw the map while the city sleeps, Crack and pack the blocks where the opposition meets, Zig-zag borders like a fever dream, Cutting through a neighborhood to split the voting stream. Precinct closures posted on Election Eve, Less machines, longer lines, harder to believe, ID laws written with a surgeon's hand, Designed to shrink the electorate across the land. Purged the rolls, no notice in the mail, Show up in November and the system starts to fail, Provisional ballot, toss it in the stack, They don't count your voice when they don't want you back. Gerrymandered serpentine, district forty-four, Representatives picking voters, that ain't what votes are for, Democracy's a promise but the blueprint got redrawn, They built the maze, erased the path, and kept on moving on. [chorus] Count every vote, count every vote, They drew the lines but we still wrote Our names on every ballot cast, Count every vote, make this one last, Count every vote, count every vote, We are the tide, we are the boat. [verse 2] Grandma waited seven hours underneath the sun, Brought a folding chair because she knew what they had done, Registration purges in the counties turning blue, Funny how the glitches only hit a certain crew. Dropbox limits, postmark traps, signature mismatch, Every little tripwire is another door they latch, But she remembers Selma, she remembers sixty-five, She'll stand in any line they draw to keep the dream alive. Students bused to precincts forty minutes out of town, Polling place got moved again, they're running us around, But we carpool to the courthouse, we don't break, we multiply, Every obstacle they build becomes the reason that we try. Safe seats and sure things, competition disappears, One-party districts breeding apathy for years, But the census is a mirror and the mirror doesn't lie, The people keep on growing and the drawn lines start to die. [chorus] Count every vote, count every vote, They drew the lines but we still wrote Our names on every ballot cast, Count every vote, make this one last, Count every vote, count every vote, We are the tide, we are the boat. [bridge] From the courthouse to the statehouse, hear the footsteps in the hall, Independent commissions, let the people draw it all, No more backroom cartographers with partisan designs, Let the maps reflect the people, not the politicians' lines. Every voice a district, every district fair and true, The gerrymander crumbles when the many outweigh few. [chorus] Count every vote, count every vote, They drew the lines but we still wrote Our names on every ballot cast, Count every vote, make this one last, Count every vote, count every vote, We are the tide, we are the boat. [outro] Count every vote, count every vote, They drew the lines, we still wrote, Count every vote, let it be known, The map belongs to us alone, Count every vote.