Check out some of the great press for The Coup!
THIS ALBUM WAS VOTED:
"Best Hip Hop Artist" - Rolling Stone
"Top 40 Albums of The Year" - Rolling Stone
"#14 Album of the Year" - Spin
"#1 Album of the Year" - Washington Post
"Top Albums of the Year"- Los Angeles Times
"#1 Album of the Year" - Time Out New York
"#1 Album of the Year" - San Francisco Chronicle
"The Year In Pop, 3 out of 4 Critics Choices" - Village Voice
"Best Albums" - Denver Post
"#2 Album of the Year" - Philadelphia Inquirer
"#25 Greatest Album of 2001" -- Blender
REVIEWS:
Pitchfork Media
Rating: 7.9
Oakland-based rappers the Coup are about as adamantly political as hip-hop comes. The original cover art for Party Music, planned long before the events of September 11th, and originally intended to go to press on that fateful day, featured an image of the Twin Towers exploding, with the two rappers posturing in front of them-- one holding conductor's batons, the other holding a detonator. The image, says the duo, was intended as a metaphor for the effect music can have on a corrupt system. 75 Ark said no. A last minute phone-call stopped the presses and the cover was redesigned. Still, no doubt, the Coup will go down in history as a strange footnote to a tragic day, the unfortunate timing of the album cover remembered long after the music. And that's too bad, because Boots Riley and Pam the Funkstress deserve to be remembered for their music. You see, the Coup knows the secret to effective politicization: before you can change people's minds, you have to engage them.
Like Public Enemy and George Orwell before them, the Coup focuses on the art, not the politics, trusting that if they do one right, the other will follow suit. The result is music that questions the common presumption that all things political must also be dry and boring. For one, the Coup's is a sound drenched in R&B and soul tradition, holding more in common with Outkast's raucous funk-driven beats than it does with similarly minded rap groups like Cannibal Ox. As such, the Coup are likely to reach an audience less accustomed to these types of ideas.
Wrapping their political missives in twisted, slithering rhymes like, "This is my resume/ Slash-resignation/ A ransom note/ With proposed legislation," Riley and Pam prove that the music is every bit as important as the politics. In ൺ Million Ways to Kill a CEO," the Coup demonstrates a wickedly dark comic sensibility, taking the cartoonish tendency towards violence often prevalent in popular rap music and applying it to an uncharacteristic victim. Among their suggestions: "Toss a dollar in the river/ And when he jump in/ If you find he can swim/ Put lead boots on him and do it again/ You and a friend/ Videotape and the party don't end/ Tell him that boogers be sellin' like crack/ He gon' put the little baggies in his nose/ And suffocate like that/ Put a fifty in the barrel of a gun/ When he try to suck it out/ A-ha!/ Well, you know this one..."
For the less murder-inclined, Riley and Pam offer a few slightly less radical solutions to societal problems; simple things like rebelling against unjust authority or merely choosing a stance ("Take a look around/ And be for or against/ But you can't do shit if you ridin' the fence"). But things really hit their stride on "Get Up," where guest MCs stic.man and M-1 from Dead Prez intone, "It's a war goin' on, the ghetto is a cage/ They only give you two choices; be a rebel or a slave," while a group of female vocalists sing an atypical mantra in typical R&B backup singer style: "You're 'sposed to be fed up right now/ Turn the system upside down."
The Coup cater masterfully to a wide audience, always holding fast to their values. Only once do they stray too far in their attempt for a broad listenership. "Heven Tonite" is the requisite sensitive rap song, and while the lyrics are stronger than most in this maligned subgenre, any sentiment is negated by the Swiss-cheese guitars lifted right off a smooth jazz station. Party Music doesn't quite pick itself up in the two songs that follow, but by this point, it doesn't much matter. They've already proven themselves worthy, and a few weak songs do not a weak album make.
There's been a tendency since the World Trade Center attacks to keep talk of political dissent to a minimum. In the meantime, our leaders have continued to act in their own best interests, using the current wave of patriotism as permission to hold open the federal wallet to corporations, cut funding to important programs, and refuse to sign the International Nuclear Arms Treaty. Meanwhile, the press reports little-to-none of this, fearing the possible consequences. In times like these, groups like the Coup become that much more important. Party Music is an effort both entertaining and politically motivating, a feat which many have attempted but few have successfully pulled off. Perhaps its radical message will succeed where other dissidents have failed: in galvanizing those who've become disenchanted with our fearless leadership of late, and in introducing a few others to the healthy practice of skepticism.
-David M. Pecoraro, January 4th, 2002
Oakland duo the Coup (Boots and DJ Pam, the funkstress) rank in the top three as far as underrated rap groups of the '90s go. That said, because lead MC Boots has no problem suggesting that big corporations are colluding with Satan and that corrupt cops disgust him ("Pork and Beef" implores listeners to "throw a Molotov at the pigs"), this release won't sit well with the apolitical crowd. In fact, the original cover artwork for Party Music depicted the duo detonating the World Trade Center. It was immediately pulled following the events of September 11, 2001. Boots' revolution will obviously not be sanitized, and on the opening track "Everything" he lays down his manifesto: "Every cop is a corrupt one without no cash up in the trust fund.... Every tried man is innocent.... Every boss better run and hide." The list of witty, counterculture songs is long, from ř Million Ways to Kill a CEO"--a crude exposé of corporate "politricks"--to the poignant "Get Up," where they team up with everybody's other fave raptivists, Dead Prez. Raging against machines and offering solutions to problems that plague low-income communities has never come in a funkier package--the sonic backdrop is mostly live funk instrumentation--and the sheer breadth of topics covered here makes the joints of most top-selling rappers seem inane and unsubstantial. Fans of Mos Def, KRS-One, and Public Enemy will get a rise out of this one. --Dalton Higgins
Village Voice
PICK HIT
THE COUP Party Music
(75 Ark)Imperfect musically (two slow ones) and politically (too anti-Amerikkkan). And right, this is the album with the withdrawn cover of Boots Riley detonating the WTC---a pun gone terribly wrong, tracks "blowing up," get it? Fortunately, most of the jokes are less doctrinaire---there are dozens better in ř Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O." alone, like "We could let him change a flat tire/Or we could all at once retire." The title's a pun, too, signifying Black Panther or Communist (or necktie), only not only, because the tracks blow up: The live band, the male and female choruses, and DJ Pam the Funkstress do here commit a positive groove worthy of Frankie Beverly, Digital Underground, Chuck Brown. Similarly, the slogans-to-go that begin with the first verse---"Every death is an abrupt one/Every cop is a corrupt one/Without no cash up in a trust fund/Every cat with a gat wants to bust one/Every guest wants a plus-one"---are underpinned by songs wise beyond anybody's years, such as the woman-friendly tale of the girl who convinced a fumbling 17-year-old Boots that he'd fathered her child. Imperfect, definitely. But only because perfection is on the table. A
Spin
Antithugs
The funky grace of The Coup
by Oliver Wang
Party Music (75 Ark) With their community politics and anti-authoritarian attitude, The Coup can seem as anachronistic as Boots' signature Afro. But they only seem out of step because hip-hop has gotten out of touch with reality. In a climate where the music's apolitical stupor makes it incapable of dealing with national crisis, The Coup's Party Music is a stark and welcome exception.
The Coup embrace Funkadelic's call to free yo minds and asses, and the duo of Boots and DJ Pam the Funkstress rarely descend into the kind of rote didacticism that's plagued other political rappers. While the album has its share of unabashed agitprop --- such as the anti-corporate "5 Million Ways To Kill a CEO" and the anti-police "Pork and Beef" --- Boots doesn't rap to the people, he raps from them, and this black-working-class perspective is far more meaningful than rap's more popular thugged-out fantasies. On Party Music, The Coup submerge their message deep into the music, which takes on a blend of squiggly, Clintonian P-funk and backwater, blues-tinged soul. "Wear Clean Draws," Boots' ode to his young daughter, holds a hand-me-down sagacity. "Ghetto Manifesto," a scorching call to everyday rebellion, shows off Boots' underrated lyrical acumen. And the real standout is "Nowalaters," a short narrative, possibly drawn from Boots' past, about a teenager he thought was pregnant with his baby. For most rappers, this would be an opportunity to claim victim status and justify misogynistic rants about gold diggers, but Boots handles the topic with self-awareness and insight.
Not as consistent as The Coup's outstanding Steal This Album from 1998, Party Music still manages to be one of 2001's best, all the more important because of its dissenting political voice in a time when cookie-cut complacency masquerades as patriotism. If hip-hop threatens to evaporate into complete irrelevance, Party Music is one of the few anchors the music can count on.
The Onion
Since the release of its 1993 debut Kill My Landlord, The Coup's great gift has been its ability to make Marxism, that least fashionable of ideologies (aside from certain strains of Islamic extremism), seem like the embodiment of common-sense wisdom. Sweetening its rhetoric with irreverent humor, The Coup unabashedly romanticizes society's underdogs and victims, finding pathos, courage, and heroism in the working class' struggle to maintain its dignity and optimism in the face of a system hostile to its well-being. Populist to the core, The Coup subverts hip-hop's materialistic streak by casting the poor as its heroes and the money-chasing big willies as its villains. Picking up where 1998's superb Steal This Album left off, Party Music is The Coup's warmest and most organic effort to date, both lyrically and musically. As song titles like ř,000,000 Ways To Kill A CEO" and "Lazy Motherfuckers" attest, frontman Boots Riley has lost little of his righteous anger or indignation. But alongside P-Funk-fueled workouts like "Pork And Beef" are a handful of intimate, soulful tracks that deftly intertwine the personal with the political. A more overtly political, feminist descendant of Lauryn Hill's "To Zion," "Wear Clean Draws" finds Riley lovingly dispensing advice to his young daughter. "Ghetto Manifesto," meanwhile, follows in the footsteps of Steal This Album's "Underdogs" in its vivid, compassionate depiction of a working class united in its suffering but alienated by the strictures of modern-day capitalism. No track on Party Music illustrates The Coup's extraordinary qualities better than "Nowalaters," which packs much of the same literary wallop as Steal This Album's "Me And Jesus The Pimp In A '79 Grenada Last Night." The song depicts a familiar scenario in which a rapper is manipulated by a woman who facetiously claims she's carrying his child. But rather than responding with anger and hostility when he learns that he's not the baby's real father, Riley reacts with a heartbreaking mixture of sadness, regret, and compassion. In the hands of another rapper, such a moment might come across as smarmy or self-righteous. Here, the song resonates with the pathos and vulnerability of an artist intent on seeing the humanity in the downtrodden, even under the bleakest of circumstances. ---Nathan Rabin
Wired
The Coup
Party Music (75 Ark)
The Coup's lead rapper-producer Boots Riley is an urban radical to the core. Reconfiguring rap posturing to fit his own ends, Boots tackles sociopolitical enemies - global capitalism, racism, educational inequity. He does so with passion and wit, and subtlety is not on his agenda. "Every one of y'all is getting pimped," he sternly warns on "Everythang." So what to do, then? Quipping about his "homie with a cell, but that shit don't ring" on "Ghetto Manifesto," Boots manages to capture tragedy and comedy at once. Though obsessed with the former, he understands the latter can help salve those wounds.
- Jon Caramanica
href='http://www.epitaph.com/bands/index.php?id=391'>The Coup title page