noinitrd is ignored, always runs initrd copy of /init

I use an initrd currently on an imx8 processor that uses buildroot for a base filesystem. (kernel is 5.10.52) For debugging purposes, I want to bypass the initrd and load the filesystem I copied to a real device partition (/dev/mmcblk2p2) -- so I pass: noinitrd root=/dev/mmcblk2p2 init=/linuxrc to the kernel command line. It gets completely ignored and boots /linuxrc that is in the initrd. console shows: Run /init as init process no matter what... and /proc/cmdline shows the parameters I pass in... Is noinitrd ignored? Are there any magic paramters that allow my system to boot off a physical partition with noinitrd specified?