Party politics

With its politically charged CD Party Music, hip-hop group the Coup won critical accolades and ignited a firestorm of criticism and rumor. On Wednesday, they bring their message to Tampa.

By TONY GREEN
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 7, 2002

[Publicity photo] Hip-hop act the Coup, led by rapper-producer Boots Riley, right, and DJ Pam the Funkstress, is known for its political statements.

Boots Riley, of the Oakland hip-hop group the Coup, is a rapper, not a social scientist. So excuse him if his polling methods are unorthodox. Then again, he says, unorthodox can be good.

"I was always wondering what people thought about the current war on terrorism," said the leader of the socially conscious (and controversial) hip-hop duo, which performs with turntablists the X-ecutioners in Ybor City on Wednesday. "I knew that people in my neighborhood were all against it, but I didn't get an idea of other people's feelings until we went on tour last year.

"We went to places like Oregon, Kansas, Washington. And every place I went, when I made an antiwar statement, people would just go crazy cheering. Then I would get people coming up to me after the show, saying, 'Thanks, man, it's good to know that I'm not the only one around here that is antiwar.' "

Not exactly the most accurate barometer of national sentiment, but then again, Riley has his own idea about the accuracy of mainstream polls. Besides, there's been enough misinformation swirling around the Coup to make even the most trusting soul start asking questions. There's the rumor about Riley having ties to terrorists. Another claims he had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Instead of being used as a tool against capitalist corruption, as he intended, Riley says the Coup's music has often been used as tool against common sense.

It all started with the cover for the group's fall 2001 release, Party Music, one that showed Riley and DJ-producer Pam the Funkstress blowing up the World Trade Center. Even though the album cover had been finished for three months before the attacks and was redesigned after Sept. 11, controversy erupted, fanned by Riley's fiercely leftist political leanings. (He has been a socialist since his teens.)

"We've been doing albums for years (starting with 1993's Kill My Landlord). But we have gotten more publicity in the past six months than we did in all of our career," he said. "We have been on national television, people have written columns about us. Our politics got us more publicity than our music."

Which is too bad, considering the funkafied brilliance of Party Music, a distillation of the best elements of sonic innovators such as Bootsy Collins and politically minded hip-hoppers like Public Enemy and, more recently, Dead Prez. Music critics elected Party Music to dozens of year-end top 10 lists. That in itself started another media storm.

Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, for example, took Washington Post music critic David Segal to task for voting the record his top release of 2001. She cited the group's "bloody terrorist fantasies" and called the album "a loathsome example of anti-Americanism masquerading as highbrow intellectual expression."

Riley says the problem is that people like Malkin take at face value song titles such as 5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO, which he says is actually a commentary on corporate greed.

"I mean, the New York Post gave us more publicity than we ever could have gotten ourselves," said Riley, "but Michelle Malkin doesn't even understand what we are talking about, or what's going on in the world. You wonder how someone like that got a syndicated column. I mean, she suggested that since I'm anticapitalist, I must be down with al-Qaida." (In her column, Malkin suggested that Riley move to "a capitalism-free cave in Tora Bora.")

Riley says it's nonsense to think he supports terrorism. His opinion is that it is the capitalists he rages against who financed terrorists in the first place.

The beauty of expressing his political beliefs through music, Riley says, is that CDs and live performances give him a platform to fully explain himself.

"If you get on Nightline, you only have like a minute to make your point. If you go up there and just repeat some new version of what everybody has already said, and what people already believe, it's going to sound like the truth.

"But if you want to say something that challenges what people already think, you don't have time to back it up. People will be calling in telling you stuff like 'You watch too many movies.' That's what we're up against."

PREVIEW

The Adrenaline Tour, featuring the Coup, the X-ecutioners, Kenny Muhammed and the Adrenaline Theater Film Festival. 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Masquerade, 1503 E Seventh Ave., Tampa. $15. (813) 247-3319.

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