Boots Riley wants to 'compel and repel' you
5/13/202646 min
Boots Riley’s new film is called ‘I Love Boosters,’ and it stars Keke Palmer as the leader of a crew of women shoplifters in the Bay Area who steal from luxury stores and sell the goods cheap to people who can't afford retail. 20 years before the movie, Riley wrote a song by the same name with his hip-hop group The Coup. The song is a love letter to shoplifters, or boosters, as they're called. Riley talks with Tonya Mosley about why his music, shows, and films -- including the 2018 movie ‘Sorry To Bother You’ -- continue to explore the contradictions that capitalism produces. Riley was a labor organizer in his teens.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
[gentle music] On Consider This, NPR's afternoon news podcast, we cover everything from politics to the economy to the world, but every story starts with a question. At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious, to make sense of the biggest story of the day and what it means for you. Follow Consider This wherever you get your podcasts.
Tonya Mosley· Host0:22
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tonya Mosley. My guest today is filmmaker, rapper, and community organizer Boots Riley. His work for the last few decades has circled the same argument, that capitalism produces the contradictions we live with, and that art can make them visible. He made that argument as the frontman of the Oakland-based hip hop group The Coup, and in his screen work with his 2018 film Sorry To Bother You, a surreal satire about a Black telemarketer who finds success after he learns to use his white voice. And he's making the argument again in his latest film, I Love Boosters, which was first a love song he wrote 20 years ago about shoplifters, or boosters as they're called.
Boots Riley· Guest1:05
[singing] A booster is a person who jacks from the retail and sells it in the hood for dirt cheap resale. In these hard times, they press on like Lee Nails. In all of my experience, their sex has been female. Back in elementary, my shoes used to rap. Every time my soles hit the street, they would flap. Then in high school, Lance and Anderson would cap 'cause my jacket didn't have a brand name on the back. Years later, this lady took me to her apartment. It looked like the Macy's sportswear department.