The Coup

75ARK
The follow-up to 1998’s brilliant Steal This Album, Party Music is another dose of radical black militant anthems. The sound is more electronic this time out, with an almost G-funk influence, and two cuts sound in homage to Public Enemy, the grandfathers of leftist hip-hop – but make no mistake, this is The Coup.

The first track, “Everythang” is highlighted by a tympani, and Boots Riley’s laid back, five-joints-a-day voice and cadence cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s. “Wear Clean Draws” is a slow jam dedicated to Riley’s daughter, “Life is a challenge and you gotta team up/if you play house pretend the man clean up,” he raps. It’s hard to imagine Riley and DJ Pam the Funkstress not putting out a solid record, and they don’t fail on this one.

The sound is angrier in places (“Ghetto Manifesto” and especially “Get Up”), but that should be a given, the more one fights the angrier one gets – the spirit of the Coup has not been sapped.

italic byline – Gavin Adair