Quotes from Boots Riley

Music is first for me. How the music makes me feel, it's like energy. It has to match my life. What's happening around me or to me. That's where it comes from.

I was born in Chicago. I moved to Detroit until I was six and moved to Oakland at that point. And then we had a couple years in Stockton and Pasadena. And by the time I was 13, I was back in Oakland.

When we were doing shows in the mid-'90s, the audiences were 95% black. What's happened now is the gentrification of hip-hop. A lot of cities passed ordinances that made it hard for black audiences to gather in large groups. Clubs are more open to hip-hop now 'cause it's the same crowd that goes to rock shows.

The goal with a show is to push forward the passion in a visual and sonic way. It all comes out in a trance-like way, fast and pulsating. Then people can go home and think about the lyrics later.

I think voting is the lowest form of political action that you can do. A lot of times, it keeps people from doing stronger things.

A record is a commodity, but so is a hamburger. Just because I work at McDonald's doesn't mean I reap the benefits of that commodity. That's the reality with most artists in the record industry: They're getting paid a subsistence wage so they can keep producing a commodity for the record label.

'Redistributing the wealth' - that phrase gets used so much that you almost get numb to it.

That punk approach of 'We don't wanna get big' is really a bourgeois thing. It's not a tactic of people that actually have been successful at changing things.

We're told, 'If you want to change the world, vote.' And really, if you want to change the world, there's a lot more things that you can do.

If you tell a story that's only allegory, then it doesn't help you at all. If it doesn't bring some emotional charge, then it's just talking about something.

I think I'm a little superstitious.

Any collective action is made up of individuals who one day decided not to sit and watch anymore.

Until we can democratically control the wealth that is created from our labor, there isn't real democracy.

The point is, is that when you elect a politician, it has nothing to do with their personality. Politicians perform a function, a role in government. And the role of city government is not one that serves the people, unless the people make them do what the people want.

I chose to do art in the way I always do it, which is with all the crazy contradictions of life in there.

I think it's important for us not just to edit the culture that capitalism creates but to create the material basis for a culture that we want.

I listen to everything from The Cure and The Clash to Prince and George Clinton.

I want to fight the McCarthyist state that's developing in this country so my kids won't live in a world where people are afraid to speak out.

I've gotten stopped for reckless eyeballing, for staring too hard. These officers think they're Tarzan and this is a jungle, that all the animals need to be tamed.

If we created a society based on love, it would be a society without exploitation.

The tech world is not a new phenomenon; it's a new era.

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.

One time, someone came up to me and said, 'I know so-and-so. They're a professor at Harvard. They're a big fan of your work.' But that doesn't impress me more than any other people feeling that way.

There are a lot of leaders that talk about ending things like oppression - whether it's discrimination or getting a job - but the reason for all of this stuff is somebody's making a profit off our backs. That's the reason why black people were brought here in the first place. It was a profit motive.