In high school, everybody rapped. You just pounded on the table.
BOOTS RILEYI thought there were too many songs about people’s personal lives.
More Boots Riley Quotes
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I was an avowed professional revolutionary by the time I was 15.
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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.
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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.
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I think there’s something your hormones do that makes a chemical change in the way you think.
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I just make music based on what I believe.
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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.
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People give out compliments because it’s polite.
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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.”
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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.
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I wanted to be part of changing the world. I don’t want to just stand by and watch it be however it is.
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I thought there were too many songs about people’s personal lives.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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