Street Sweeper Social Club: the Boots Riley interview

August 10, 2010 by Bill Palmer

When Street Sweeper Social Club debuted last year, it had all the makings of a one-off supergroup: Boots Riley from The Coup rapping over rock jams laid down by Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine on an album which instantly made them one of the more politically and socially relevant artists of the decade by default – and seemed to be too much of a dream come true to last for the long term. But with today’s release of the Ghetto Blaster EP, Street Sweeper Social Club has if anything become more of a band, now bringing the touring members into the studio for a seven song opus which includes everything from newly written songs, to new versions of their own older material, to a cover of the LL Cool J classic Mama Said Knock You Out, to a stunning reinterpretation of M.I.A.’s 2008 hit single Paper Planes – which the group then had the guts to release as their own lead single.

Coming out of a Friday afternoon rehearsal which saw the band gearing up for a Warped Tour performance in which they’re sharing the stage with bands half their age, Boots Riley talked with me about the unique choice of material for the new record, the societal implications of songs like The New Fuck You, and his views on his own continued relevance as a rapper who’s about to turn forty.

Your debut album was a full length record of new material. Ghetto Blaster is more of a mish mosh of different stuff. What motivated you to put it together?

We just wanted to put something else out and do some more shows. We had a few new songs, we had some songs that we’ve been doing live that people wanted to hear studio versions of, but we just weren’t ready to come with a new album yet, so we put this out as a snapshot of where we’re at right now.

You’ve got the two really prominent cover songs on there. These were songs that you were already doing live?

We did them live in concert and they got amazing crowd reactions, and people started hitting us up on various internet communication waves and asking us to do a studio version of it. So we gave them what we were asking for. They were things that were fun to do, so when we hit the studio, we were like fuck it, let’s go ahead and do some of the songs we’re having fun it on stage. And I think it also goes to show some of the difference between the first album and this one. On the first album Tom did the bass and did lead and rhythm guitar, and a lot of that was overdubbed. But this one is with the band that we’ve been touring with, Tom on lead, Carl Restivo on rhythm guitar, Dave Gibbs on bass, and Eric Gardner on drums. So I think how we gel together in the live set has really come across to the recording, and that’s why we chose to do some songs that we were only doing live before.

It’s not that uncommon to see a group cover or reinterpret a song that’s only two years old, but usually it’s a case where…

The Rolling Stones used to cover songs that weren’t even off the radio yet.

Yeah, but you don’t see that in the present day too much. That was more the Little Richard era, where they would almost be stealing. That was back when they’d try to steal it note for note. This isn’t stealing…

I’m okay with the word “stealing.”

I guess it just seems like it’s pretty ballsy. I don’t know of too many other artists that would have had the guts to take something like Paper Planes, and only record it but put it out as your single and perform it on TV. It’s pretty ballsy, I think. It’s pretty cool.

I don’t know, I guess I didn’t even think of it that way. I think we just don’t think about shit [laughs] and we do it. Maybe if you had been in the studio, telling us how ballsy it was, we wouldn’t have done it. We do what we like, and I think that’s what’s cool.

I’m trying to work out the timeline with you and LL Cool J. I think Mama Said Knock You Out came out in 1990. Were you guys contemporaries, or did one of you influence the other?

Definitely. LL Cool J, if any rapper tells you they weren’t influenced by LL, they’re lying. But The Coup came out after LL and after this song. I spent many a days as a teenager in the mirror acting like I was LL, as everybody as soon as they saw his part in Krush Groove, where he came in with the box and did “I can’t live without my radio.” He’s a consummate performer, so definitely this is paying homage to him and to that song. If you’re talking about ferociousness on stage, you definitely have to mention LL. And Street Sweeper Social Club, we’re definitely about a lot of things, and one major tenet is kill the fuck out of the crowd when we’re on stage.

I want to ask you about the lyric from The New Fuck You. “Freedom is the new fantasy, revolution is the new fuck you.” What’s the gist of that, what does that mean to you?

Everything is amped up right now. Everything is extreme in in this world, where things aren’t symbolic anymore. Another of the lyrics are “These lines are new Molotovs, right now is the new Holocaust. More troops is the new call it off, I’m trying to pry this collar off.” So revolution is the new fuck you, since things are so amped up, you can’t just be rebellious by having a rebellious attitude and telling people “fuck you” and throwing the middle finger. If you really want to be rebellious, you’ve got to be about changing the way things are. You can’t just wear the black leather jacket and have a sneer on your face and be rebellious anymore. Things are much more serious than that.

Revolution is kind of cliche, because people talk about revolution and change almost as an excuse to not have to go out and actually do it.

The reality is that we live in a system that tries to convince us that we can’t change anything. So people will use religion to give theirself a reason to not do anything. They’ll use education to give theirself a reason to not to anything. And they’ll even use their so-called identities as revolutionaries to not do anything. “Oh, that’s just reformists, they’re not gonna change anything.” And so they don’t get involved in actually building a movement.

What we need are reforms led by folks that have the idea that we’ve got to change the whole system, because the only way that you’re gonna have a revolution is with masses of people involved. And the only way masses of people are gonna be involved is if they see that they have power in numbers. And the only way they’re gonna see that they have power in numbers is if they’re able to make changes to their daily life by being involved in campaigns and action. And so those campaigns and action that make changes to daily life are by nature reform. But some people have taught themselves that they’re too revolutionary to be involved in that. And so then it becomes something in which people have contests at quoting Mao or Lenin or the Zapatistas, and dress in a certain way, and it becomes this sort of cultural thing as opposed to being involved in actual changing of people’s daily lives to build that movement.

Is that why you guys have gotten involved in the Arizona boycott?

Yeah, it’s part of that same ethos. We’re gonna put our actions where our music is. And the whole politic behind that is that organizations in Arizona that were organizing against SB 1070 asked us to do that.

So you guys aren’t anti-Arizona. You’re just trying to help the people within Arizona that see this the same way you do.

Yeah, the people that asked us were organizations of people that live in Arizona. As a matter of fact, it’s very likely that we would be involved in performing at rallies if we were asked that were against that law. I know that there’s been a couple changes recently, so I’m not sure where that stands and I’m not qualified to talk about that. But we would perform in Arizona for a demonstration against the law, we’re just not gonna perform at any venues.

You’re going to turn forty in the next year or two. Does that have any psychological impact on you? Does that mean anything that you’re turning forty?

Well let me tell you this. When I was about to turn twenty-four, I finished my second album. I stopped rapping, and I ended up stopping rapping for a few years. The reason why? I felt I was too old to still be a rapper. I felt like I had gotten into this to have my music be part of the movement, and I was at heart an organizer, yet I had been an artist all of my adult life.

So I quit. I told them I’m not turning in another album, and I started an organization called The Young Comrades. But my point is that I’ve been having a mid-life crisis since I was twenty-three because all of my heroes such as Fred Hampton and all these organizers and revolutionaries, they were doing their shit when they were nineteen years old. Yet we live in a society in which people are in their mid thirties and still trying to figure out what they’re gonna do with their life because there are so many things that are cut out, there are so many ways that we’re told we’re meaningless.

So what I’m saying is I’m always at that place where I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life and how I can better be part of the world, and how I can use my music to effect change. So that psychological thing that would hit most people when they’re turning forty, that’s a constant for me and will be until I’m in my sixties and seventies.

Beatweek’s 2009 interview with Street Sweeper Social Club’s Tom Morello is right here

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