With only hours left in the 2012 presidential election season, the electoral activist may be looking for some politically charged music to carry them down the street on their Get Out The Vote campaigns. Oakland’s radical hip-hop outfit, THE COUP, has just released a new album out on Anti- Records called Sorry to Bother You, and while it’s plenty political, it may not carry the right tune for fans of the status quo.
Rapper and bandleader Boots Riley, who identifies as a Marxist, spits out some of the most caustic rhymes THE COUP has ever released on this new album. Songs like “Your Parents’ Cocaine” and “The Guillotine” send a message straight to society’s elite: you’re all parodies of normal people and we’re tired of taking your crap; meanwhile, the album’s opening track, “The Magic Clap,” is a call for the people to rise up and take politics into their own hands, rather than simply elect representatives who may or may not actually represent them.
Sorry to Bother You has no shortage of slower, more introspective songs either. “The Gods of Science” intentionally drones on, sonically and lyrically representing the corporatization of the science community and the cooptation of the scientific method for profit. The minimalist ballad “Violet” sits like a hurricane’s eye in the middle of the album, with nothing but Riley’s rhymes and a string section providing the backdrop for a snapshot of a moment, or perhaps a lamentation for someone lost.
The remarkable thing about Sorry to Bother You is the effortlessness with which it melds punk, funk, old-school rap and pop sensibilities into one set of songs. It’s actually kind of refreshing to hear Justin Sane, frontman for the punk band ANTI-FLAG, sing backup vocals on “Your Parents’ Cocaine” (also, the KAZOOS!), and “You Are Not A Riot” could come straight out of an Electric Six album.
If anything could be said to be wrong with this album, the pacing and song order is by far the messiest aspect. The album’s tempo looks something like this: start off strong, weaken with some slow songs, pick back up in the middle, drop off again and then end on a fast song. It doesn’t work terribly well for me. Individually I would say that each song on Sorry to Bother You is solid; in the order they’re in, not so much.
Label: Anti-
Score: 7.0