The Coup - Pick a Bigger Weapon
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Music CD Cover
Artist: The CoupEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-04-25
Music Label: Epitaph / Ada
Soundtracks:
- Bullets And Love
- We Are The Ones
- Laugh/Love/Fuck
- My Favorite Mutiny
- I Just Wanna Lay Around All Day In Bed With You
- Head (Of State)
- Shoyoass
- Yes Em To Death
- Ass- Breath Killers
- Get That Monkey Off Your Back
- Mindfuck
- Two Enthusiastic Thumbs Down
- I Love Boosters!
- Tiffany Hall
- Babyletshaveababybeforebushdosomethingcrazy
- Captain Sterlings Littel Problem
- The Stand
Free Music Notes for Pick a Bigger Weapon
Free Music Review: Party Music for the Coming Revolution
Hit: 5 Stars
Anyone who tries to tell me that rap is all about bling bling and a glamorized drug culture needs to take a listen to the Coup. This group does what I thought couldn't be done, they make intelligent, funny, and poignant rap music with a deep groove and a sense of how to rock a party. In fact, this Oakland duo is making party music for the coming revolution.
The Coup is Pam the Funkstress as DJ and Boots Riley, MC. Pam's work is amazing here, both as a scratcher and as a producer with an ear for big fun grooves. The influence of classic funk is all over this CD. Jams like Laugh/Love/F*&% and Monkey Off Your Back have a serious four on them that recalls classic P-Funk, while Shoyoass has a keyboard solo on it that might have come straight from Bernie Worell. Even the sillier stuff like Head (of State) and I Love Boosters are characterized by grooves that won't quit and make your feet want to get up and move. In fact, if another rapper was over top these beats it not hard to imagine any number of them as club hits.
But another rapper isn't working in this duo and thank God for that. Boots Riley is one of the more gifted and intelligent rappers working today. His rhymes are passionate, often very funny, and occasionally moving without the "slice of life" street violence of even the most socially conscious mainstream rappers. What other rapper would mix a call to revolution with a call to party. ("If I can't change the world I ain't leavin'/Baby that's why you should call me this ev'nin') Boots wants revolution, there's no question. He mixes a street smart sensibility with fairly well developed revolutionary thought, but he is at his most humorous when he's most political. His use of a childhood street taunt to recap the secret history of the Iraq conflict is both funny and frightening since it's all true. The ongoing skit and song about Assbreathkillers is hilarious and a call to all people to examine how much we put up with day to day from those who we allow to have power over us.
But Riley is also an extremely versatile rapper. Lay Around All Day In Bed is one of the sexiest raps I've ever heard, mixing a sensuous groove from Pam that recalls classic Bootsy Collins with a sexy rap about not wanting to leave your woman for your work. Being Boots, he brings in resentment against meaningless work and the daily grind and eventually builds the track into a call for social revolution...but he does it soooooo smoothly. Boots also tells stories that in other hands could be fairly maudlin, such as Tiffany Hall, a tribute to a young black woman of intelligence, who's self-image is marred by her heavy frame and who dies of complications from botched liposuction. In other hands this would almost surely be played for irony or laughs, but Boots plays it totally straight and the track becomes an honest self-criticism (he admits that he too made fun of her large backside) and an indictment of a society that would put more emphasis on the shape of a woman rather than the spirit she shows.
The tracks on this disc are enhanced by some rather incredible musicians, who help the disc maintain a live funk sound rather than the rather old sounding looped hip hop which still dominates the genre. And several tracks feature the voice of Silk E, a singer with whom I am unfamiliar but who impresses me very much. In fact, Silk E gets the most moving track of the album all to herself, the surprisingly poignant Baby Let's Have A Baby (Before Bush Do Something Crazy). Despite the humorous sounding this track is a tender cry for love from a woman who has just gotten her life together and stopped smoking crack and looking for a little permanence in a world which seems careening towards destruction. Silk E's voice is tremulous with emotion and makes the track deeply affecting.
All in all, Pick a Bigger Weapon proves that, despite impressions to the contrary, it is possible to produce a socially conscious, politically progressive rap album that is also entertaining and a blast to dance to. Other highly political MCs like Immortal Technique, Dead Prez and Son of Nun should take a page from Boots and Pam and remember that it's no coincidence that political parties have the word PARTY in them. After all, in the words of George Clinton, free your mind and you're a** will follow!
Pick a Bigger Weapon Poster
Hailing from Oakland, CA, this duo takes well thought out, radical politics and infuses them with the energy of artfully inspired hip-hop. Soulful funky beats and cleverly crafted rhymes make the politics of the record easily accessible to a wider audience.Let's face it: Most rap artists aren't interviewed by Political Affairs, a self-proclaimed "Marxist monthly," but then again, Boots Riley isn't your typical rap artist. The "raptivist" certainly doesn't mince words on Pick a Bigger Weapon, the Coup's first release in five years. (You may remember the Oakland duo's previous release, 2001's Party Music, with its original pre-9/11 cover shot of them blowing up the Twin Towers.) In 2006, Riley's acidic political and social commentary has never been sharper or timelier, and his keen sense of humor plus the fluid, soul-drenched beats (courtesy of partner Pam the Funkstress and a stellar session band) make it insanely palatable. The truly vital "My Favorite Mutiny," which also features Talib Kweli and the Roots' Black Thought, pulses with funk rhythms and punctuating horns while three of rap's smoothest spitters deliver the straight dope. Riley offers a radical history lesson on "Head (Of State)": "Bush and Hussein together in bed... billions made and millions dead." On "We Are the Ones," he warns, "we're the have-nots, but we're also the gon'-gets." The slow jam "BabyLet'sHaveaBabyBeforeBushDoSomethin'Crazy," with singer Silk E, is witty, seductive, and poignant all at the same time. In his PA interview, Riley says Pick a Bigger Weapon is full of "anthems for the struggle," and like the best of George Clinton, James Brown, and KRS-One, this is music for your mind, body, and soul. Is it too much to ask to have this added to high school curricula? --Marc Greilsamer
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