Renegades of Funk

Written by Bambaataa, Arthur Baker, John Miller and John Robie, and produced and mixed by Baker and Robie. Tommy Boy issued it as a 12-inch single in 1983 with a Renegades Chant and an instrumental on the other sides. It joins electronic music to heavy percussion, with lyrics that link past revolutionaries and bohemians to present-day street artists. Baker said the rapper at first thought being a renegade was something bad, so he told him that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were renegades, and the rapper bought into it. Christgau judged it ambitious but unconvincing. The album carries a remix credited to the Latin Rascals.

The song was used in a 1985 Miami Vice episode, The Maze, and the Toronto Raptors made it their entrance song at home games in 2006. Rage Against the Machine recorded it for their 2000 covers album Renegades, adding a percussion interpolation of the Incredible Bongo Band's Apache and riffs from Cheap Trick's Gonna Raise Hell, and released it as a single in 2001. They first played it live at their reunion show at Coachella in 2007. Weird Al Yankovic included their version in his Angry White Boy Polka medley in 2003.