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Revolution! by Sam Costello The Coup "Steal This Album" 1999 Dogday Records I have a soft spot in my heart for people named Boots, or Bootsy. Witness my feelings for guitarist Bootsie Collins (well...) and St. John's baller Bootsy Thornton. So, when I saw that the rapper for The Coup was named Boots Riley, I knew things were looking up. And that was before I even heard the CD. The Coup come with an interesting billing: they're from Oakland, but they don't sound West Coast. They're political, but they make you want to dance. In fact, they're communists, and you hear it in every song. The album starts with "The Shipment," and a bit of the long- forgotten art of the record scratch. As soon as the first huge bass licks pound out of the speakers, you know that if Public Enemy had ever had a DJ like Pam the Funkstress, who backs Boots on ever track, they would have been the most important rap act of all time, if not among the greatest in all types of music. "The Shipment" is a good, catchy introduction to the album and Boots' style, displaying his lyrical acuity and intelligence with lines such as "I slang rocks--but Palestinian style" and "make the ruling class hate us more than child support payments." Perhaps the most written about song on the album, though, is the second track, "Me and Jesus the Pimp in a '79 Grenada Last Night." Even more than the clever traditional Marxist analogy drawn between religion and pimping, this song is held together by Boots's unstoppable rhymes, the driving beat, and the story. Told from the point of view of a child whose mother was killed by her pimp, Jesus, the song has all the hallmarks of a fine short story: flashbacks, motif, and complex characters. It may well be the crowning jewel of the album. Elsewhere, we find discourses on the poor state of the capitalist health system ("Breathing Apparatus"-containing searing lines like "I've been looking at the patient's stats, and it seems he's lost his will to pay"), the exploitation of the poor inherent in the credit system ("The Repo Man Sings for You"), and a gut-twisting song about the ghetto and its effects on people trying to survive there ("Underdogs"-"They'd tear this muthafucka [the ghetto] up if they really loved you."). Clearly Pam the Funkstress's scratching and Boots's beats drive The Coup's original sound. There's more to their originality than that, though. Unlike much rap, almost all the instrumentation on the album is live, not ripped off from another poor song banking on listener's memories to drive it to the top of the charts (see: Daddy, Puff). The live instrumentation comes through in the tone of the music, the richness. The Coup's not just talk, though, but they've only put out three albums in the nine years they've been on the scene. Why so few? Well, according to the band's website (http://www.illcrew.com/thecoup/) Boots has spent a lot of the intervening time working with community organizations in Oakland. You've got to back up your lyrics, says Boots: "Rap in the late 80's and early 90's was a lot of empty rhetoric...there was no movement to back it up. If you've got PE posters on your wall and an African medallion around your neck but no food in your refrigerator, what's that achieving?" Now I don't get around the rap block as much as some, but I try to keep up, and I feel confident saying that this is easily the best rap album since Nas' "It Was Written," if not before that. Whether Nas can take that title back with "I Am" will be seen soon enough (and covered in these pages), but for now, all I can tell you is to do your part in smashing capitalism by buying The Coup's "Steal This Album." Sam Costello is a hockey-playing cracker from South Dakota. |
