Party Music

Coup | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 6, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 2001
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Tommy Boy
• ASIN: B00005N6RO
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130,085 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Everythang

2. 5 Million Ways To Kill A C.E.O.

3. Wear Clean Draws

4. Ghetto Manifesto

5. Get Up (featuring Dead Prez)

6. Tight

7. Ride The Fence

8. Nowalaters

9. Pork And Beef

10. Heven Tonite

11. Thought About It 2

12. Lazymuthafucka

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Oakland duo the Coup (Boots and DJ Pam, the funkstress) rank in the top three as far as underrated rap groups of the '90s go. That said, because lead MC Boots has no problem suggesting that big corporations are colluding with Satan and that corrupt cops disgust him ("Pork and Beef" implores listeners to "throw a Molotov at the pigs"), this release won't sit well with the apolitical crowd. In fact, the original cover artwork for Party Music depicted the duo detonating the World Trade Center. It was immediately pulled following the events of September 11, 2001. Boots' revolution will obviously not be sanitized, and on the opening track "Everything" he lays down his manifesto: "Every cop is a corrupt one without no cash up in the trust fund.... Every tried man is innocent.... Every boss better run and hide." The list of witty, counterculture songs is long, from "5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO"--a crude exposé of corporate "politricks"--to the poignant "Get Up," where they team up with everybody's other fave raptivists, Dead Prez. Raging against machines and offering solutions to problems that plague low-income communities has never come in a funkier package--the sonic backdrop is mostly live funk instrumentation--and the sheer breadth of topics covered here makes the joints of most top-selling rappers seem inane and unsubstantial. Fans of Mos Def, KRS-One, and Public Enemy will get a rise out of this one. --Dalton Higgins

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best hip-hop release of 2001 (that I'm aware of), October 29, 2003

By 

"needstobuyabike" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Party Music (Audio CD)

There are plenty of hip-hop joints that lament the male who is deceived by a woman who claims to be carrying his baby. Few, if any, examine the situation beyond the most superficial level. Fewer still have the wherewithal to express compassion and understanding for such actions. Boots Riley does exactly that on "Nowalaters", the eighth track on The Coup's exceptional release Party Music. Taking the noble idea presented on the track Boots goes even farther. He manages to imbue it with a literary quality one would expect to find in a James Baldwin novel rather than in most rap. The are few tracks in hip-hop so transcendental although it is probably worthwhile to mention that one of them would be another Coup cut "Me and Jesus the Pimp in a '79 Granada Last Night" off Steal This Album. The Coup have always worn their Marxist politics on their sleeves but have done it without coming off as self-righteous or oppressively heavy. The tracks on this album range from the overtly ("Ghetto Manifesto" and "5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O.") to the covertly revolutionary ("Wear Clean Draws" and "Thought About It 2"). "Wear Clean Draws" is Boots rapping advice to his daughter. It brings a refreshing dose of feminism to a genre where misogynistic chest-thumping chauvinism is the norm. "Ghetto Manifesto" is a superb track that's part "Kapital" and part "Tear the Roof Off" with a slow, grinding funk that makes Marxism danceable. There are a couple of guest rappers on this album. Dead Prez makes a typically tight appearance on "Get Up" and T-Kash spits with exceptional skill on "Pork and Beef". The track "Heven Tonite" is a sort of folk-rap challenge to organized religion that wouldn't sound out of place in a collection of IWW tunes. This album is tight from front to back and benefits from solid production that leans more towards P-Funk than most other Coup albums. A couple tracks sound like they have roughly similar drums to them but the overlay and fill is consistently tight. The beats vary wildly throughout the album but make sense enough to give the album a persistently funky flow. I don't know that I would go so far as to say this joint is better than Steal This Album, but it's certainly its equal which is to say, one of the high spots in all of rap music.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boots Is The Dopest Cat To Bless The Mic!, June 17, 2002

By 

Jabari Adisa (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Party Music (Audio CD)

Yeah... I'm gonna go all the way with it.

Boots is the most talented MC to ever touch the microphone! His ability to tell a story, evoke emotions, entertain, enrage, impress and inform are unmatched in recent times.

No riddles. No moralizing. No heavy-handed b***h-slapping. Just righteous, funk-laden gangsta tracks with radical lyrics. The magic mix that no one else has succeeded with. Not PE, not X-Clan, not Dead Prez, not even Mos Def or Talib (although they all come close).

It's too bad that more people won't hear it.

When Genocide and Juice (another Coup masterpiece) was considered 'new' I was bumping it in my ride near a high school in Oakland. Some youngsters stopped by the car to inquire who the group was. They seemed so impressed with the music that I just gave them the CD and bought another one for myself.

The Coup should be leading the nation. They don't simply re-hash the same old stories of 'things they've seen.' They hold a mirror to my own face and force me to question why I think / feel / love a certain way. Who could ask for anything more?

It's unfortunate they had to change their album cover art.

Keep on bangin' them out Boots and Pam! Oh yeah... Bring E-Roc back for at least one track per LP.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hit or miss.... but an incredible album...., November 14, 2001

By 

J. Michael Showalter (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Party Music (Audio CD)

The Coup is a great group; if you're not familiar with them, you should be. This album 'Party Music' is their third wide-released album. Although they've deleted a group member during the course of their career: they've stayed true to what they are: an incarnation of Public Enemy for the 1990s laying down perceptive, intelligent rhymes over tight backing tracks that sound someplace in between P-Funk and Dan the Automator. I'm not as big of a fan of this whole album as I am of their others; on individual songs, though, they are way ahead of anything that they've ever done before. Lots of stuff on this disk is head-music: blatantly "anti-"-- anti-establishment, anti-capitalism, anti-black and poor people being oppressed as society makes them apt to be. It's not head music, though, that you couldn't roll in your car with: you could blare this stuff and it'd still be worth it's weight. My only knock on this whole album is that it is too hook-reliant: you're going to have that, though, and it tells you more about my taste in music than how good this disk is. It is awesome: buy it if you can. If you have to think about it, read more reviews. It's totally worth dropping the cash....