Selling the elements

>> The Coup’s MC Boots Riley preaches to the choir

SIMPLE TRUTHS: Riley

by NARCEL X

I remember rolling down the streets of Abu Dhabi, smoking sheesha and sippin’ on Genocide and Juice, the 1994 album that announced the Coup as keepers of the black Marxist flame of their home turf, Oakland, California—and also a really hype hip hop band. They’ve persevered through much since then—2001’s Party Music, with MC Boots Riley detonating the World Trade Center on the cover, got yanked and later re-released; hype man Tarus Jackson was shot dead in his home by a robber in ’05; last year, the Coup’s tour bus flipped and burned (all on board got out, but they lost all gear and other possessions), since which DJ Pam the Funkstress has stayed at home while Riley hits the road with a three-piece band.

In other words, there’s no slowing Riley down, not for live shows, not for new records (Street Sweepers, a project with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, is currently in the works), and not when he’s reached by phone for a state-of-the-disunion address.

Mirror: What would you say to people who say positive hip hop doesn’t change, that people are preaching to the converted?

Boots Riley: The whole idea of preaching to the converted, there’s nothing wrong with that. You always have contradictions going on within the movement. The whole metaphor of “preaching to the choir”—the choir is doing all types of things that go against its own belief system. They need to go to church to get re-inspired. It’s good to have something to inspire us and stay on course.

M: What does music do for global awareness in relation to politics?

BR: Everything is politics. Politics is the relationship between human beings. You can choose to engage in individual-style politics, people one-on-one, or you can talk about neighbourhoods, city to city, economic classes to each other. I would say music can talk about the feelings and emotions that are in between the words.

M: How do you feel the role of an MC has changed in society nowadays?

BR: Some ideas that come across are about how great of a this or that they are. A lot of the MCs that are classified as “gangsta” actually talk about problems that are going on in the world. I think that hip hop can articulate more ideas in it per second than any other art form has to date.

M: Who do you think reinforces this boxed-in mentality, the masses or the system?

BR: I think that the industry, or capitalism in general, whether emotions or art or people, need to categorize these things to sell them. The whole “five elements of hip hop” is a sell-out move. Instead of the reality, that hip hop came out of a situation of resistance of black people in the U.S., separating it from that cultural resistance, they turned it into the chocolate-selling-the-peanut-butter thing. The fact that somebody met someone at a party in ’72 and hip hop was born helped categorize the movement, so they can sell it.

M: So it’s easier for the masses to consume?

BR: Humans are way smarter than that. It’s easier for the ruling class to sell us a simplified idea of what our world is. It’s in their interest. If they tell you a simplified truth all your life, like “the U.S. is a democratic country,” you’re gonna believe it. If anyone counters that, they have to defend themselves for five minutes or five hours in order to seem like they know what they are talking about. So it’s that simplified view of the world that keeps that ruling class in power.

At Club Soda on Sunday,
July 1, midnight, $24.50