Boots Riley -- The Coup

The best day of my life was the day Boots Riley, lead singer of The Coup, friended me on Facebook. The best day of my life was the day Boots Riley, lead singer of The Coup, friended me on Facebook. The Coup are an Oakland-based hip-hop duo (his DJ is Pam the Funkstress) and they're probably most known for being the band that had to pull their records off the shelves in 2001 (the cover of their album showed the twin towers blowing up, natch).

And it's true that they are dangerous -- I mean in the sense that if all the homeboys, b-boys and bad boys in this town took what Riley says to heart and stopped pointing their guns at each other and start aiming at the fat cats who run the show, it would be ON. (They even have a song called Fat Cats and Bigger Fish).

Still, I'm not even sure I agree with his politics. Riley is straight out of real Oakland, the Oakland of politically saavy, well educated lawyers, educators, ministers who outgrew the Black Panthers but not the struggle. I'm not talking about the corrupt pseudoelite, like our current mayor or the Muslim Bakery gangsters, but the revolutionaries, the quakers, the maoists, the civil rights lawyers who know their Huey Newton AND their Isaac Newton. It's a kind of realpolitik-dosed agitpop that I don't think the other so-called conscious rappers (with all due respect to them all -- Common, Dead Prez, Mos Def, etc) ever really match. They sound kinda coffee-shop, if you know what I mean: A lot of rappers speak on political action, but Boots Riley means it. Like when UC Berkeley asked him to be a keynote speaker, for the graduation of their black students, he said no, because of a labor struggle going on at the university at the time. Here's how he put it:

In solidarity with the Custodian’s Union (AFSCME Local 3299), I will not be making the UC Berkeley 2007 Black Graduation commencement speech. Many ideas were talked about regarding how to show solidarity with and not get in the way of this fight. Some said that I should use the opportunity to speak to the audience about the union’s demands. However, being that the speaking theme I was given was ‘Revolution: Command Change,’ I feel the best way to embody this theme is not to give lip service to it, but to show that we must be involved in the struggles that are happening around us every day.”

But I'm leaving out the important part, which is that he's funny. Like "Cars and Shoes" is all about how much it sucks to have a hooptie (beat up used car)... he gets stuck on the bay bridge, has to get a new piece of junk each week, his radio "only gets one station on AM/it's chinese but if you listen you can catch what they sayin'", and he STILL wants to invest in an expensive new set of speakers. It helps to know Oakland slang, and the woes of Oakland public transportation, but the message is pretty fucking universal: "My car is better than my shoes".

One of my favorite is off of Party Music. It's a guy trying to pick up a cute activist at a club:

Who's the culprit? follow the buck I'm just followin' up
if you're like me you got to be in the middle of it
unravelling the riddle of it.
You fittin' to ride up on the powers that be?
I'm fittin' to ride with you take me home in your little --

I'm here to laugh love, fuck and drink liquor
and help make the revolution come quicker

See what's so awesome about this song is that it would be really annoying if he was just preaching at us but he knows no one's gonna join your the movement f it's not sexy.

Riley is happily committed to his woman, and he's not known for bringing groupies back stage…but if he were, I'd be the first in line to blow his roadie for access. Precisely because he comes off as the kind of guy who wouldn't bring groupies backstage!

Then there's the song he wrote for his daughter, when she was four years old. The chorus goes

Handshakes and promises lies can spoil 'em
words should be bond and seal
wash your hands after using the toilet
brush after every meal -- and also (like your grandaddy told me)
Wear clean draws every day
'Cause things might fall the wrong way
You be lyin' there, waitin' for the ambulance
And your underwear got holes and shit...

What I love about it is that he knows the hardest part of parenting, you're really helpless in the face of the outside world. You want to protect them from everything but you can't, instead all you can do is teach them how to be good people and stay clean. And he's still righteous and funny:

Tell your teacher I said Princesses ARE evil
how they got all they money was they killed people
If someone hits you hit 'em back
THEN negotiate a peace contract

Again he's singing to his baby, not lecturing to an audience:

"your face is just like the sun when it raises
thank you for adding beauty to my phrases."

Love beats hate. And it's the love that keeps you fighting.

Here's a great quote from an interview in which he talked about hypocrisy, life on the road, and Obama.

MVRemix: Do you ever feel pressure to strictly adhere to the messages you put forth in your music, or are you ever just like, "Fuck it, Wal-Mart's got 24 rolls of toilet paper for $4.50"?

Boots Riley: See, that doesn't conflict with what I believe in. I shop at Wal-Mart. A lot of times, since there hasn't been a big movement going on for a long time, what's replaced the movement and direct action has been this sort of boycott strategy, meaning you don't have to organize anything, and you don't really have to do anything, you can just say, "Well, I don't buy Nike, or I don't buy Wal-Mart," but it doesn't really change anything because for one, you can't organize people to not do that. It's not effective historically. And two, the exploitation is at the production point. So if you want to stop that exploitation, you help to create unions in these places. You support a lot of the radical organizations all throughout Asia and Latin America that are trying to create unions and raise the wages. We've gotten away from organizing at the point of the conflict and started thinking about what kind of consumerism we want to engage in, and that's not really the question. So yeah. Wal-Mart is the cheapest place I can buy. But, again, I also support things like No Sweat Apparel. When I make my clothes, I don't buy stuff from sweat shops. One time there was a mistake and when I caught it I sent them back, but I get my stuff from American Apparel or No Sweat Apparel [now].

Then there's "Underdogs" -- which I dare you to download off itunes. If it doesn't make you cry, hit me up and I'll paypal you 99 cents to cover the loss.

And just to make clear that the last time I saw him (he lives in Oakland, it's a small town) he was at Whole Foods. And why not? We all deserve a living wage, control over the profits of our production ...and organic heirloom tomatoes.