Boots Riley stands with a leftward lean and an anti-capitalist bend, still rocking the same afro and lamb chop sideburns he’s had since his rap group, the Coup, formed in 1991. The red hallways of his Victorian home in west Oakland are decorated with pictures of his family, paintings of Black Panthers and posters of Angela Davis. Raised in Oakland, the home base of the militant Black Panther Party in the 1970s, it was only natural that the city’s history of radical activism would inspire the front man of the political hip hop group to make revolutionary music.

Riley, E-Roc (who later left the group), and DJ Pam the Funktress released their first album “Kill My Landlord” in 1993, which received critical acclaim. Their first single, “Not Yet Free,” received regular rotation on BET’s “Rap City.” The following year’s “Genocide and Juice” was another classic, yet slept-on, record. After their label Wild Pitch Records went under, the Coup went underground, falling off of the mainstream radar. When they reemerged in 1998 with “Steal this Album,” the rap game had changed and socially and politically conscious hip hop was no longer fashionable.

“BET’s Rap City used to be a format in which, if you could show you had a good quality video and song, and you had national distribution, you had a good chance of being able to get played on Rap City,” Riley says. “It’s not like that anymore. You have to show that you’re getting regular rotation spins on the radio.”

Though the Coup’s music is straightforward raw hip hop, Riley’s defiant and anti-establishment sensibilities give him a broader appeal than your typical pop rap artist, especially since mainstream hip hop is not fully accepting of music with a rebellious edge. This is why their upcoming album, “Pick a Bigger Weapon,” will be released on a predominantly punk label.

Riley’s “sense of the world puts him in the punk rock camp and that type of rebelliousness,” says Andy Kaulkin, president of Anti Records, an imprint of Epitaph. It was Kaulkin who decided to sign the Coup and other hip hop artists to the label. “He appeals to a lot of punk rockers.”

“My music talks about masses of people coming together to affect change,” Riley says. “Hopefully, my music can be used by organizers as something to inspire themselves and others to keep doing the work they’re doing.”

His punk appeal is similar to many artists in the underground hip hop arena who are attracting more than your typical hip hop head. Artists like Sage Francis, P.O.S., and Atmosphere are crossing over, gaining popularity with the punk crowd, extending their fanbase.

“Pick a Bigger Weapon” is likely to be the Coup’s highest selling record.

“Epitaph is known for taking groups that sell 100,000 to 150,000 copies each time out and tripling, if not quadrupling and quintupling their sales,” Riley says.

Distribution problems hindered record sales of 2001’s “Party Music,” though the album gained national attention for its original artwork, making Riley the face of hatred for many right-wing critics. The album’s cover, created three months before 9/11, showed Riley holding a bass tuner and Pam the Funktress holding conductor’s wands. Behind them, the World Trade Center was exploding.

“I heard about [9/11] on the radio and I didn’t make a connection to the cover really because planes slammed into the World Trade Center and I didn’t picture it looking similar,” Riley says. “It was supposed to make the statement that our music is destroying capitalism. The album cover was only a metaphorical piece of art that talked about what we wanted our ideas to do.”

The Coup’s ideas challenge the mainstream way of thought. For this, they are often labeled “underground,” but the word has many interpretations for Riley.

“[Underground hip hop] has nothing to do with record sales or commercial viability. It has to do with a certain sound,” Riley says. “Underground should mean rebelling against something. The stuff that’s underground now is just so blah for me. It’s cut and paste. It’s phoned in. It’s very simple cookie cutter stuff.”

“We can be called underground in the sense that our music is rebelling and is saying something important. We’re trying to form a rebellion,” Riley says. “If underground means not commercial, then we’re not underground. I definitely want to hear us on the radio. I want my music to be all over the place.”

Riley’s got the clip loaded and his gun cocked, ready to make another killing.
“Pick a Bigger Weapon” drops on April 25.