Boots Riley is an American musician, vocalist, writer, and public speaker most known for being the front man and producer of The Coup as well as the front man for Street Sweeper Social Club.

Boots Riley was born in 1971 into a family of radical organizers in Chicago. The family later moved to Detroit and then to Oakland. His interest in politics began at a young age, inspiring him to join the Progressive Labor Party and the International Committee Against Racism.

In 1991 Riley founded the political hip hop group The Coup with fellow United Parcel Service worker E-roc. Pam the Funkstress, DJ for the group, joined in 1992. Boots was chief lyric writer and produced the music on the albums.

In 1991, he and other Hip-Hop artists created the Mau Mau Rhythm Collective. They put on “Hip-Hop Edutainment Concerts” which allied with and promoted the campaigns of community based organizations like Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAP), Copwatch, International Campaign To Free Geronimo Pratt, and the Black Panther Alumni Association. The Mau Mau Rhythm Collective was actively involved in the campaign to stop the FBI’s “Weed And Seed” program (which was used in the ’60s in conjunction with CoIntelPro) from coming to Oakland. They used the growing popularity of their concerts to bring a large number of youth to take over a closed Oakland city council meeting and hold a public meeting.

At this time, Boots decided to stop making music in favor of forming an organization called The Young Comrades, with a few other radical, black community organizers. The organization mounted a few important campaigns in Oakland which yielded some minor victories, such as the campaign against Oakland’s “no cruising” ordinance. The organization folded and Boots went back to music.

1998’s Steal This Album, released on indie label Dogday Records, was called “a masterpiece” by Rolling Stone magazine.

In 2000, Boots, through his workshop on Art and Organizing at La Peña Cultural Center, led a group of young artists to create “Guerilla Hip-Hop Concerts” on a flatbed truck which traveled throughout Oakland to protest California’s Proposition 21. The workshop also distributed tens of thousands free cassettes of “The Rumble”, which he called “newspapers on tape”.

The group’s fourth album, Party Music, was released on 75 Ark Records in 2001. It was re-released in 2005 by Epitaph Records. The album hit #8 in the 2001 Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll- the most important year-end critic’s list, was named “Pop Album Of The Year” by the Washington Post, and “Hip-Hop Album Of The Year” by Rolling Stone.

In 2002, Riley taught a daily high school class, “Culture and Resistance: Persuasive Lyric Writing”, at the School of Social Justice and Community Development in East Oakland.

In 2003, Vibe Magazine named Boots Riley one of the 10 most influential people of 2002.

That same year, Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello invited Riley to be part of the “Tell Us the Truth Tour”. The tour was meant to shed light on alleged monopolization of the media and the coming FTAA agreements. It featured acoustic performances by Riley, Morello, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, Mike Mills and Jill Sobule. It was hosted by Janeane Garofalo and Naomi Klein.

At around that time, he founded ShoYoAss Words, Sounds, & Pictures, a media company specializing in music and art that he calls “relevant to social change.”

An episode of The Simpsons called “Pranksta Rap“, with the score and music produced by Boots Riley aired in 2005. In 2006, The Coup released Pick a Bigger Weapon on Epitaph Records. The album was named “Album Of The Year” by Associated Press. It featured guest appearances by Tom Morello, Talib Kweli, Black Thought from The Roots, and Jello Biafra.

In 2006, Morello approached Riley to form a band together under the name Street Sweeper. The duo who later changed their name to Street Sweeper Social Club, releasing their self-titled debut album in 2009. They toured in support of it along with Nine Inch Nails and the recently reunited Jane’s Addiction.

www.streetsweepersocialclub.com

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