Today in Hip-Hop — November 6: The Coup’s Party Music Turns 25, and the Cover That Never Made It to Stores

November 6, 2001. The Coup’s Party Music came out on 75 Ark, and it turns 25 today. Most people remember it for the cover nobody got to buy. Months before September, Boots Riley and Pam the Funkstress shot an image of themselves in front of the Twin Towers as they exploded. Boots was pressing a button like a detonator. It was actually a guitar tuner, and Pam was waving a pair of conductor’s batons. The idea was that party music brings down capitalism. After September 11 the label pulled the image off its website within hours, and the album came out in a new sleeve.

The Record Under the Controversy

The cover story buried the actual album, which is a shame, because Party Music is one of the funkiest records the Bay ever made. Boots produced 11 of the 12 tracks himself, and he built them with a band rather than from samples. Mike Tiger plays Micromoog, clavinet and Fender Rhodes all over it, and David James handles guitar. The liner notes list Oakland’s Defiant Sun Studio. That’s why “Wear Clean Draws” and “Heven Tonite” feel like a living room party and not a sample-flip exercise.

Then there’s the politics, which Boots never hid inside metaphors. “5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O.” walks you through it as a how-to. Throw a twenty into a vat of hot oil, and when he jumps in after it, watch him boil. Frank Kogan’s Village Voice review, dated the day the album came out, spent much of its space arguing with Boots over the slogans versus the storytelling. That’s an argument conscious rap has been having with itself since at least the Black Star era. The one track Boots didn’t produce is “Get Up,” with dead prez. Tahir made the beat, M-1 and stic.man rap on it, and the liner notes say it was recorded in Brooklyn.

Here’s the jewel in the credits. The liner notes credit KPFA funk historian Rickey Vincent as “Consultant for the Funk.” Twelve years later Vincent published his own book called Party Music. It tells the story of The Lumpen, the Black Panther Party’s in-house soul band, and he’s said the album was part of the inspiration. Boots wrote the introduction. Epitaph reissued the record in 2004. Boots took the same mix of agitprop and groove to the next Coup album, Sorry to Bother You, and then to the film of the same name.

Wear It

We made a dead prez Let’s Get Free tee for the heads who play “Get Up” right after “Hip-Hop.” M-1 and stic.man brought the same energy to the Coup’s record in 2001, and the shirt says it as plainly as they did.

Also Today in Hip-Hop

• 2001: Petey Pablo’s Diary of a Sinner: 1st Entry (25 years). His Jive debut came out the same day as Party Music. Timbaland produced “Raise Up,” the “North Carolina, come on and raise up” record that put Greenville on the map.
• 2007: Jay-Z’s American Gangster. A concept album built around the Frank Lucas film. Jay had it pulled from iTunes at release: “As movies are not sold scene by scene, this collection will not be sold as individual singles.” Four years after the “retirement” of The Black Album, he was protecting the album as a format.
• 2012: E-40 & Too Short’s History: Function Music and History: Mob Music. Two Bay Area pillars put out two full albums on the same day through Heavy on the Grind. More on 40 Water’s catalog here.

Stay creative — The Custom Creative Team

Jon Jones