THE COUP

ARTIST / BAND: THE COUP
SONG (MP3): WE ARE THE ONES
ALBUM: Pick A Bigger Weapon
FILE UNDER: Hip Hop / Funk / Soul
LABEL: anti
INFO: The Coup's new album, "Pick a Bigger Weapon", kicks off with a classic Boots Riley line—"I'm a walking contradiction/Like bullets and love mixin'…"—and then it just gets better. After a 14-year career that has defined the word "uncompromising", the Coup return, armed with bigger funk and taller tales. Backed by a stellar band that includes Audioslave's Tom Morello, Dwayne Wiggins, and veterans of Parliament-Funkadelic, the Gap Band, Toni! Tony! Toné!, Jesse Johnson, and Frankie Beverly and Maze, the sound is a little edgier on this record and the beats a little faster." The Coup's uniquely bent grooves point to "Dirty Mind"-era Prince, late-80s Too Short, and the trunk-rattling hyphy sonics of the New Bay movement. The song-cycle of "Pick a Bigger Weapon" highlights Boots' storytelling gifts—the same outrageous humor, underdog love, and righteous rage that produced classics like "Fat Cats/Bigga Fish" ("Genocide & Juice") and "Me & Jesus The Pimp In A '79 Granada Last Night" ("Steal This Album"). The songs capture the collisions between economics and everyday life, the political and the personal. The album begins with "We Are The Ones", the story of a street player who could be related to Slick Rick or the late Bay Area rap hero, Mac Dre. "Laugh/Love/Fuck" is a breezy manifesto.
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