What first got me involved in politics was being 14, and a youth organizer comes to my house with a van full of 14 year old girls. "Hey, you want to go to the beach with us? But first we're going to go support the cannery workers' strike in Watsonville."

Boots Riley

Categorized in : Years Beach Girl

What the media is playing is what people want is really a false idea. Capitalism and people who control the market have a large hand in everything. It doesn't have anything to do with figuring out what the crowd wants to hear. It has to do with the media deciding what they think people want to hear.

Boots Riley

media hands thinking

In reality, I know I'm not hurt directly by sexism; however, my life is made less because of it, so I started thinking about the fallout from relationships in which people feed off each other.

Boots Riley

hurt reality thinking

I wanted to be part of changing the world. I don't want to just stand by and watch it be however it is.

Boots Riley

want watches world

Death to the pigs is my basic statement.

Boots Riley

statements pigs

A lot of what we say and do are regurgitated things that have to do with what we think we're supposed to be saying and doing.

Boots Riley

saying-and-doing supposed-to-be thinking

I always write knowing that people will hear it, but also hoping they'll see it. So a lot of times I make lyrical decisions based on what looks better. Also I write based on what I saw for a video. I obsess over lyrics in the hopes that they'll endure in different ways. I'm very precious about it.

Boots Riley

decision writing people

A lot of us don’t get a sense of our personal power. I know the vast difference that one person can make in changing things.

Boots Riley

personal-power that-one-person differences

I wanted to write a song about sexism, but I didn't want to do it in a mechanical way and be like, "Don't be sexist!" because that's not how I talk in regular life.

Boots Riley

want writing song

Sometimes it takes time to get into what ideas actually mean to you. Even when you're not writing a song, it's like that.

Boots Riley

writing song mean

Rappers are usually rapping about knowledge they think people need to get by in the world. If there's no movement that gives the idea that the knowledge people need is how to take over the system, what they see is that people need to know how to hustle; people need to know how to survive.

Boots Riley

rap ideas thinking

I am a person who always feels like I am not doing the right thing because there's always so many things that need to get done.

Boots Riley

done feels needs

Becoming a father made me a lot more sentimental than I ever was before. I never cried at movies before I became a parent. I feel music more intensely. I think of my political ideas as ideas about how I want to interact with other human beings as opposed to abstract theories about how the world should be.

Boots Riley

father ideas thinking

I was an avowed professional revolutionary by the time I was 15.

Boots Riley

revolutionary

What I'm trying to do is make music that people relate to, that talks about ideas that are personal but also make that connection to trying to make revolutionary change, and I don't need to change my music to get to a certain audience.

Boots Riley

trying people ideas

I just make music based on what I believe.

Boots Riley

i-believe believe

I have tried to write songs quickly that get scrapped. I've also taken a long time on songs that get scrapped because you can over-think something, and you've squeezed the life out of it. As opposed to work of art, it looks like a really great work of craftsmanship.

Boots Riley

taken song art

I had no idea how much the stuff I was doing was affecting people outside Oakland. At the time, also, hip hop wasn't able to tour because all these clubs that let hip hop come in now, they would never have let hip hop come in.

Boots Riley

oakland people ideas

When I was five years old, me and my cousin got into a fistfight because when "That's the Way (I Like It)" came on the radio, he said, "That's my song," and I said, "No, that's my song."

Boots Riley

cousin song years

I thought there were too many songs about people's personal lives.

Boots Riley

personal-life song people

In high school, everybody rapped. You just pounded on the table.

Boots Riley

high-school tables school