The Coup- Pick A BiggerWeapon

Mon 24th Apr, 2006 in Music Reviews

The Coup will probably never shake their greatest moment of infamy – the original cover art of their 2001 album Party Music. That cover, featuring Twin Towers exploding as The Coup grinned in the foreground didn’t exactly win the group any fans after Osama’s boys had gone to work that September morning. The fact that the album’s lead single was called 5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO probably didn’t help either.

The album was released in October that year, with a new cover, but it appeared that The Coup may have destroyed their chances of success, ever to be known simply for that cover. Yet they have survived the controversy and Boots Riley and Pam the Funkstress have returned armed with an album that leaves no doubt about their commitment to funk and politics. Taking the Funkadelic to Parliament, if you’ll excuse the lame pun.

The sounds of George Clinton’s varied guises have strongly influenced The Coup’s sound, placing them alongside the likes of Outkast. The live funk instrumentation gives Bigger Weapon a depth and richness of sound that is often sorely lacking from many hip-hop albums. And while Boots may be political but he’s far closer to Andre 3000’s smooth funk and wily humour than Chuck D’s earnest politicking. Thus we get tracks like Ass-Breath Killers and I Love Boosters about the dangers of kissing your boss’s ass and the services provided by shoplifters respectively.

This also means that a sly, string-laced groove like the Prince-ly Ijustwannlayaroundalldayinbedwithyou can lead into the bubbling synth-clap political attack of Head (of State).

Baby, it’s hard to pull away from you…
We all over each other like white on rice
We be in bed like Bush and Hussein
-
Bush and Hussein together in bed
Giving H-E-A-D: head
Y’all mutherfuckers heard what we said
Billions made and millions dead

The two strands, political and soulful, also combine on the soulful Baby Let’s Have A Baby Before Bush Do Somethin’ Crazy as guest vocalist Silk E pleads:

I don’t want the world to blow
Before we get a chance to let our love grow

D’wayne Wiggins of Tony! Toni! Tone! provides the silky guitar licks.

Aided by cameos from Talib Kweli and Black Thought of The Roots, My Favourite Mutiny is the most straight up hip-hop track on offer as they each a verse over a marching beat shaded by the tinkling keys of a baby grand piano and brass flourishes. Boots rises to the occasion and matches his high profile guests.

Befo’ they told Rosa ‘Black in the Back’
Befo’ the CIA told Ricky Ross to put crack in a sack
And Gill Scott traded rappin’ for smack
This beat alone should get us platinum plaques

Other guests on the album include Jello Biafra of The Dead Kennedys and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, though their contributions are fairly minor. Biafra playing an obnoxious corporate instructor on a brief skit and Morello’s guitar rocking on the Iraq war story Captain Sterling’s Little Problem.

Bigger Weapon is a political party record, an album that never takes serious issues too seriously. As Boots raps on his manifesto:

Laugh/Love/Fuck,
I’m here to laugh, love, fuck and drink liquor
And help the damn revolution come quicker

It’s funky hip-hop for people with a soul. So, it should work nicely to aggravate and educate any Young Liberals who think the Black Eyed Peas are ‘dope’.