From the 1994 album: "Genocide & Juice" The Coup is an American hip hop band from Oakland, California. Their music is an amalgamation of influences, including funk, punk, hip hop, and soul. Frontman Boots Riley's revolutionarily-charged lyrics rank The Coup as a renowned political hip hop band aligned to radical music groups such as The Clash, Dead Prez and Rage Against the Machine.[according to whom?] The Coup's music is driven by assertive and danceable bass-driven backbeats overlaid by critical, hopeful, and witty lyrics, often with a bent towards the literary. The Coup's songs critique, observe, and lampoon capitalism, American politics, white patriarchal exploitation, police brutality, marijuana addiction, romance, working at fast food places, and disparities among race and class. The Coup's debut album was 1991s The EP and almost all of the songs on it (except "Economics 101") were put on 1993's Kill My Landlord. In 1994, the group released its second album, Genocide & Juice. The group took a four-year recording hiatus to work as community activists before releasing Steal This Album to critical acclaim in 1998. The record's title pays tribute to 1960s radical Abbie Hoffman's yippie manifesto, Steal this Book. Steal This Album featured the stand-out single, "Me and Jesus the Pimp in a ’79 Granada Last Night." The online magazine Dusted called Steal This Album "the best hip-hop album of the 1990s". Party Music and post-9/11 aftermath In 2001, The Coup released Party Music to widespread praise. However, in part because of distribution problems, sales of the album were low. The original album cover art depicted group members Pam the Funkstress and Riley standing in front of the twin towers of the World Trade Center as they are destroyed by huge explosions, and Riley is pushing the button on a guitar tuner. The cover art was finished in June 2001 and the album was scheduled to be released in mid-September. However, in response to the uncanny similarity of the artwork with the September 11, 2001, attacks, the album release was delayed until November of that year with the cover featuring a hand with a flaming martini glass. The attention generated concerning the album's cover art precipitated some criticism of the group's lyrical content as well, particularly the Party Music track "5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO." The song's lyrics includes lines such as "You could throw a twenty in a vat of hot oil/When he jump in after it, watch him boil." Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin cited the song in calling the Coup's work a "stomach-turning example of anti-Americanism disguised as highbrow intellectual expression."[3] Mid-2000s On November 15, 2005, Tarus Jackson (AKA Terrance), who had joined the group as a promoter, was fatally shot during a robbery at his home in Oakland. December 2, 2006 saw another tragedy for the Coup: About two hours following a performance at the San Diego House of Blues, the tour bus in which the group was riding drove off the road and flipped over before becoming engulfed in flames. All passengers managed to climb out alive, although some were badly injured. The group did, however, lose all of its clothes, computers, cash, identification, house/car keys, cell phones, all of its instruments, and sound equipment. Since an insurance settlement was a long time coming, the group was forced to cancel the rest of its tour. The group’s songs "My Favorite Mutiny" and "Pork & Beef" were featured in the 2007 film, Superbad, with the former also being featured in the HBO miniseries 24/7 Flyers-Rangers, as well as in the video game NBA Live 07, while "Ride the Fence" was featured in EA's 2007 skateboarding video game Skate. The song “Captain Sterling’s Little Problem” accompanied the closing credits of Sir, No, Sir, a documentary about the GI anti-war movement. Recent activity The Coup's sixth album, a concept album entitled Sorry to Bother You, was released on October 30, 2012, to wide acclaim. The first track, "The Magic Clap", was leaked by the band themselves and posted below an article on August 13, 2012. Sorry to Bother You was inspired by a screenplay written by Riley, "a dark comedy with magical realism" that drew inspiration from his time spent working as a telemarketer. The film's screenplay was published by McSweeney's in 2014. Riley was able to secure funding to turn the script into the film Sorry to Bother You, which was released in theaters by Annapurna Pictures on July 6, 2018. The film, which follows a young African-American telemarketer who adopts a white accent in order to thrive at his job, stars Lakeith Stanfield, with Armie Hammer, Tessa Thompson, Terry Crews, and Danny Glover in supporting roles. Having taken six years after their last album, The Coup recorded a full soundtrack to the film, entitled The Soundtrack to Sorry to Bother You, and released the first single, "OYAHYTT (feat. Lakeith Stanfield)", on July 13, 2018.

• published: 24 Aug 2018
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