Monica Topping
Radio Radio Radio

Boots Riley is working on making a movie — one where he is the main character, and the plot is inspired by his time working as a telemarketer, which is one bit of information that rarely makes it into Riley’s biographies, as written by other people. The soundtrack to the dark comedy, titled “Sorry to Bother You,” will be the next, highly anticipated, album from The Coup, whose last record came out four years ago.

Riley sees his skills as a salesperson as closely tied to those of a lyricist.

“A good salesperson figures out, in a very different way — in a very exploitative way — what it is that the person they’re talking to wants,” says Riley, “and where’s the bridge between the thing that they have and the thing that the person wants.”

His first job, in his pre-teen years, was going door-to-door to sell newspaper subscriptions., which is where he was forced to listen to people, to figure out the best way to get them to buy his product.

“When you write, you’re trying to figure out the best way to relate an idea, if it’s a grand political idea or an emotion,” he explains. “Doing telemarketing or any other sales, to be good at it, you’re doing some of the same things. Unfortunately, it was the worst kind of prostitution of my talent, but that’s what I started out doing.”

Riley’s political inclinations, which is where his energy was focused, starting as a teenager, were shaped while hanging out at neighborhood meetings, hosted by his parents — radical community organizers, in Riley’s own words. Neighbors would come over to the house and talk about trouble finding jobs, or how were trying to talk the landlord down the street into not evicting a family living in one of their homes, and the meetings would end with everyone playing games or listening to Stevie Wonder, Ohio Players and Sly and the Family Stone records.

“Their meetings didn’t look like meetings to me, at the time,” says Riley. “And that’s because these meetings weren’t separate from everyday life. I lived in a house that always had a lot of people coming in and out of it, and being part of our daily household life. It wasn’t just an abstract idea of community — it was actually people who lived in the neighborhood.”

The struggles the neighbors were involved in were personal and local, which translates into how Riley, as the main lyricist for The Coup, gets his own points across.

“I talk about all these grandiose ideas through everyday struggles,” he says. “So what I listen to are people talking about trying to survive. What I listen to are people thinking about how they’re going to spend their life. And I listen to the fact that most people are stuck in the mode of figuring out how to survive.”

Riley’s life as a lyricist and musician started around the time he was 17 or 18 years old, finally writing down the words he was rhyming in the first incarnation of The Coup. It’s not until the group’s second album came out, though, that he feels like he started growing as a writer and political advocate.

“I got better as a writer because on my second album, I decided I’m not going to use the words ‘communism,’ ‘socialism,’ ‘capitalism,’ ‘exploitation’ — any of these catch words. I’m going to say it all by talking about what’s going on in the world and not trying to consolidate these ideas into these catch phrases, which don’t usually even mean anything to the people using them, anymore.”

Using those catch phrases, Riley asserts, means never getting his point across.

“All you’re doing is using signifiers that put you in a certain category,” he says. “It’s like walking down the street dressed in black, with a black bandanna around you and a gas mask and you look like a black anarchist, but you’re not getting your idea across to the people seeing you. You’re just putting yourself into a certain category.

“And even if people are agreeing with you,” he adds, “they’re not relating to you. I want people to relate to me, and not just agree with me.”

Riley and The Coup take their message on the road for a short West Coast tour, starting next week in Arcata. For anyone who made the trek down to Redway in December to see the group at the Mateel Community Center, much of the live lineup will look familiar.

For the past few years, DJ Pam the Funkstress has stayed involved with her group’s recording sessions, but stays off the road to spend time focusing on her successful Bay Area catering business. On the road, Riley is joined by vocalist Silk-E, drummer Quebec “Q” Jackson, guitar player B’Nai Rebelfront and keyboardist LJ. This tour will also introduce the group’s newest member, bass player Marcus Phillips, who fills the shoes of Dewey Tucker, who played The Coup’s Mateel show in December. Barely a month after that show, Tucker was shot and killed on his way to band practice in Oakland.

The decision to bring Phillips into the touring band was an easy one, says Riley, who explains that unlike a lot of other big city music scenes, toward which outsiders migrate, Oakland’s musician pool is made up of players who have known each other most of their lives — they can duplicate each other’s styles.

“I could never replace Dewey, as a person,” says Riley, “and that’s the thing. It never was a problem for me as far as musically, but it was a problem for me, personally. It was a problem for all of us, personally. His good friend and our good friend, Marcus, is going to be playing the bass.”

About a month after The Coup’s tour, Riley will be out on the road with his other current project — a collaboration between himself and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello — called Street Sweeper Social Club. They'll play the Van’s Warped Tour in San Diego on August 10, then hit Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C. on the Rock the Bells tour.

Before he switches gears, though, Riley says he and The Coup are looking forward to playing for new and old fans in Arcata, which hasn’t happened for a few years. What Riley hopes will happen is that hip-hop fans’ notions’ of what a live hip-hop show should look and sound like will be shattered when they see The Coup with a full band.

The Coup plays Wednesday, July 7, at Humboldt Brews in Arcata. The show starts at 10 p.m. with Rude Lion Sound and other guests. Tickets are $22 in advance, available at the Works in Eureka and Arcata, and online at www.eventbrite.com.