Boots Riley: ‘Theft is not outside of capitalism, it’s what it was built on’

The outspoken musician and film-maker talks I Love Boosters, his colorful follow-up to 2018 hit Sorry to Bother You, and the criticisms of his partnership with an Ellison

Don’t call Boots Riley an anti-capitalist, at least not without qualification. “I’m a communist,” he clarifies. “A lot of stuff that calls itself anti-capitalist is doing so because they’re afraid of calling themselves socialist or communist or something else.”

But the one-size-fits-all label persists for a reason. From his early work with the Coup, a subversive hip-hop group that gleefully mocked the genre’s prevailing culture of wretched excess on albums like Kill My Landlord and Genocide & Juice, Riley has made art that treats capitalism less as the operating system for daily life, complete with its expected bugs, than an axeman lurking under the bed.