Boots Riley on Billionaire’s Row

Saturday night, I exited the N train at 57th Street—Billionaire’s Row—walked half a block surrounded by some of the world’s most expensive luxury towers, and took a seat in an upscale theatre. The lights dimmed, and three commercials were shown—for Land Rover, the Bahamas, and Tiffany’s.

When lights came back up, a communist walked onstage. As part of the New Yorker festival, Boots Riley—the activist, rapper, and writer-director of the 2018 magical-realist, labor-unionist dark comedy Sorry to Bother You—was being interviewed by Doreen St. Felix—a New Yorker culture writer and author of the definitive text on Rihanna.

Unlike much recent press about Riley, St. Felix didn’t focus the interview exclusively on Sorry to Bother You, which has earned Riley glowing write-ups everywhere from Mother Jones to Variety to The New York Times Magazine. Instead, she asked the polymath to tell his life story, leaving plenty of room for digressions about capitalism, communism, and culture.

Riley was born to parents involved in the groundwork of social justice—his father was a one-time member of Students for a Democratic Society, a civil rights attorney, and a public defender; his mother did much of the same work, and both were supportive of Riley’s radical tendencies during his teenage years. He described supporting agricultural workers’ strikes as a 14 year-old in Oakland, and being called into his high school principal’s office for organizing a city-wide school walk-out in response to a proposal to eliminate summer break. “Raymond Riley is a communist who wants to take us back to the days of the Black Panther Party—don’t listen to what he says!” his principal announced over the school intercom.

Riley then enrolled in film school, but dropped out when he started rapping and got a record deal with his group, The Coup. To see how Riley’s politics influenced The Coup’s music, one only needs to read their album titles: Kill My Landlord, Genocide & Juice, Steal This Album. In the late aughts, Riley also performed as part of Street Sweeper Social Club, a rap-rock duo with former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.

“Boots Riley in a leather jacket,” from Wikimedia Commons.

Riley thought about what became Sorry to Bother You for years, then wrote it in a fit of productivity, then shopped the screenplay around for years more. After he handed a copy to Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s published it in 2014.

After the screenplay’s release, Riley said Jordan Peele had expressed interest in starring in the film, “then he directed Get Out and said ‘I don’t wanna act any more.’” Next, Donald Glover was interested, but Glover said, “I might get Star Wars and Atlanta season two.” Riley told Glover he couldn’t wait around for his  schedule to clear up. Ten minutes later, the agent of Glover’s friend and Atlanta star Lakeith Stanfield called Riley about the role. “He must’ve been within earshot,” said Riley.

Stanfield stuck, and Sorry to Bother You was released this January. It’s an absurd, ambitious film about the excesses of capitalism, and its villain, played by Armie Hammer, is a young, Silicon Valley techno-douche—Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos meet Scarface, with a dash of the Soviet guy who tried to create ape-man supersoldiers for Stalin. Given the recent stream of tech-related scandals including Cambridge Analytica and Amazon’s mistreatment of warehouse workers, St. Felix said that Sorry to Bother You’s release was well-timed, despite its long incubation period. Riley agreed, sort of, but said that Sorry to Bother You didn’t have to be released in 2018 or even be about the tech industry. “It could’ve been made any year that we’ve had capitalism.”