Working Through His Anger

There was a time, not so long ago, when hip-hop mattered. Artists such as Public Enemy, KRS-One and Disposable Heroes of Hiphopricy created vital music of urban rebellion, brash and lewd but also pointedly insurrectionary. By the late ‘90s, politically charged hip-hop had receded into a cartoon version of social protest, and the music was co-opted by white suburban America as a soundtrack to nothing in particular.

Boots Riley fondly remembers that halcyon era, but he refuses to look back for too long. “When we were doing shows in the mid-’90s, the audiences were 95% black,” says Riley, the leader of Oakland-based rap duo the Coup, which also features female DJ Pam (original member E-Rox left in 1998). “What’s happened now is the gentrification of hip-hop. A lot of cities passed ordinances that made it hard for black audiences to gather in large groups. Clubs are more open to hip-hop now ‘cause it’s the same crowd that goes to rock shows.”

Wanting to Sell Records, but Not Sell Out

Riley, 30, thinks a lot about such things. As the frontman for the most confrontational rap group in America, the rapper is caught in a vexing bind. He wants his band to sell a lot of records, but the will to compromise just isn’t there. The Coup’s latest album, “Party Music,” on the Ark 75 label, is a sharp stab at the solar plexus, an articulate manifesto for social revolution that implores its listeners to think hard about forces--corrupt cops, on-the-take politicians, fat-cat CEOs--that control their lives.

An advocate of socialism, Riley is arguably the most outspoken social critic in contemporary music, and while the Coup hasn’t caught fire commercially (“Party Music” is at the modest 15,000 figure), word is spreading--the album finished at No. 8 in the Village Voice critics’ poll of the best records of 2001.

“Every night on this tour, I say something against the war” in Afghanistan, says Riley, whose group appears with X-ecutioners on Monday at the House of Blues in West Hollywood and Tuesday at the Glass House in Pomona. “Last night, this guy in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt started cursing at me. After the show, he came up to me and told me that he had thought about what he had done, and that perhaps I was right. That’s cool, ya know? It’s not like our shows are filled with people who have little red stars on their hats.”

Riley is deeply disturbed by the corporate co-opting of hip-hop, and by the record business’ aggressive efforts to woo white consumers. He still can’t quite reconcile himself to the fact that the current tour is sponsored by the health-beverage company SoBe.

“I mean, when we were in Tallahassee, [SoBe representatives] went down to Florida State, which is primarily white, and gave away free tickets,” says Riley. “But there was a black university much closer to the venue, and kids there didn’t even know about it.

“There are people out there dedicated to changing the core demographic of this music. For our last album, we were getting played in three major markets, and we had the No. 2 video on BET, but we couldn’t get shows. Every time a club would book us, the police would come and say we were drawing the wrong crowd.”

Despite 10 years of anti-establishment protest, the Coup made national headlines last year not for its music but for an eerily prescient photograph. Just weeks before Sept. 11, it distributed advance copies of “Party Music” to the media with a cover that depicted the World Trade Center being blown up by a bomb. The cover was later featured in a few national magazines, and a controversy was hatched. Riley scrambled to come up with an alternative--a Molotov cocktail in a martini glass--before the album’s November release.

“I think that ended up being cool, in the sense that a lot of people and journalists who wouldn’t have listened to the album before now listened,” says Riley. “It allowed me to get some views against the war out there that wouldn’t have been there. I just chose a symbol that had to do with corporations.”

Riley’s urge to speak truth to power is bred in his bones. His parents were social activists in Riley’s native city of Detroit, and he was involved in organizing long before he discovered rap. “My dad was involved with the NAACP and the Progressive Labor Party,” he says. “I grew up around politics. I organized my first campaign when I was 14, a walk-out in my high school to protest the year-round school schedule.”

By the time Riley became involved in rap, he felt like “a burned-out organizer.” Emboldened by the Schoolly D and Run-DMC records he was exposed to, Riley began to rap at talent shows and formed the Coup in 1991 with DJ Pam. “I only thought that change could come through organized protest,” says Riley. “I never connected the two parts of my life until later on.”

But Riley has not forsaken activism for music. A few years ago, he took a hiatus from hip-hop to work with his organization the Young Comrades, a group that conducted campaigns against various racially divisive issues in Oakland. “I just look at music as a retreat from organizing,” says Riley. “It’s like a tug-of-war with me. Music can be effective, but it’s not any good if there isn’t a grass-roots movement going on to support it.”

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The Coup, with X-ecutioners and Kenny Muhammad, the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, Monday at 7:30 p.m. $15. (323) 848-5100.Also Tuesday at the Glass House, 200 W. 2nd St., Pomona, 8 p.m. $20. (909) 469-5800)