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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.

Boots Riley

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Boots Riley
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: April 1
Film Director
Musician
Rapper
Record Producer
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Chicago
Illinois
Raymond Lawrence Boots Riley
Write
Didn
Wanted
Sexist
Writing
Mechanical
Way
Sexism
Life
Regular
Like
Talk
Song

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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.
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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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People give out compliments because it's polite.
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I lived in Detroit until I was six. My older sister was living with us, and she listened to the Ohio Players and Stevie Wonder, so I grew up listening to stuff like that.
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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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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 just make music based on what I believe.
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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.
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In high school, everybody rapped. You just pounded on the table.
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I was an avowed professional revolutionary by the time I was 15.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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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.
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It's usually important to me to get my idea out first because a lot of times my ideas will seem weird to musicians.
Boots Riley
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Death to the pigs is my basic statement.
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I thought there were too many songs about people's personal lives.
Boots Riley