by Andrew Reynolds | excerpted from PP74
Know what? If I can’t bust out my cool roller-boogie moves, I don’t want to be part of your revolution. Fortunately for you, the Coup has dropped their new disc Pick a Bigger Weapon. So now the booty-shaking revolution can go forward.
With Boots Riley on vocals and Pam the Funkstress on turntables, the Coup has been making politically vibrant hip hop for 15 years. Blending politics and hip hop is nothing new, of course. But too often in political hip hop, the beats take a backseat to the ideology, resulting in a kind of overcooked broccoli-with-a-bass-line. Well intentioned, but nobody is going to throw it on to get the party started.
But the Coup is just what the party needs—hell, their last disc was called Party Music. Riley, a former community organizer, knows that change is possible. Furthermore, if everyone who feels beaten down by this society, this culture, and this system joins together, then change is not only possible, it’s inevitable. Your anthems are here—the rink is now all-skate.
Tell me about the title Pick a Bigger Weapon.
In general it means how fast you can take it to the next level. We’re all involved in our individual struggles. We all are trying to figure out how to pay the rent, how to put food on the table, get adequate health care, whatever. So whether or not we have decided to join an organization and decided we are revolutionaries, we have no choice but to be in a struggle against the system. What I’m saying is everybody’s fighting. ¶ But the title comes from me and my girlfriend having dinner with Jessica Care Moore, the poet. And my girlfriend was about to order her—I dunno, her fourth or fifth drink. And, you know, a lot of times when people are drinking or getting high or doing anything they’re trying to forget about something or they’re dealing with problems. And being perceptive about this, Jessica Care Moore said, “Girl, pick a bigger weapon.” And that’s the album title. ¶ So a lot of the lyrics and the titles and the concepts came from regular, everyday shit. Like “I Love Boosters.” I decided to do that when I was walking along Lake Shore in Oakland and out of the Gap came two women with a whole rack full of pants and shirts. Not just the hangers and clothes but the whole . . . the clothes were attached to the rack so, they both had whole racks full of stuff.
The display rack from the store?
Yeah. And they bolted out the door into a car that was waiting for them with the doors open. They jumped in, there was a third girl who was the getaway driver. They just jumped in and dashed off and everybody on the street started laughing and even the people chasing them out of the Gap started clapping and laughing.
It’s interesting that the album’s real crime song is about shoplifting.
Well the real crime song is “Head of State.”
