Lansing — Sweaty, tired, throat raw and still vibing from a worn out crowd after an intense performance, The Coup's frontman Boots Riley throws up the peace sign to a couple of starstruck fans and slowly strides over to a dimly lit converted church pew to have a little sit down with The State News.

The duo is rigorously romping through the nation on its "Pick a Bigger Weapon" tour to promote the album wielding the same name that dropped April 25. The Temple Club, 500 E. Grand River Ave., played host to The Coup and company with an underground show appropriately intimate to complement the group's funky vibe-based style. It's hard to label the rap act with any sort of conventional title. The group's beats are provided by Pam the Funkstress, and the band is known for keeping crowds active.

After signing a few autographs, taking a few pictures and rocking a few bodies, Boots was happy to participate in a little Q&A session about The Coup's style, the new album and the state of hip-hop.

The State News: So how would you describe your sound?

Boots Riley: It's definitely hip-hop. You know, some might call it "rap" but it's funk — it's funky. It's definitely about the baseline. A lot of songs nowadays are leaving out the baseline and they sound tight but … baseline gets me hyped. We try to keep it danceable, aggressive. I'm known for my lyrics, but I want people to be able to not just bob their heads, but I wanna make music that makes people wanna dance. But also with the lyrics, you know when you're vacuuming your house and playin' it loud, I want you to move.

What are your influences?

I mean, my influences are so many that whenever I say somethin' I get mad cause I leave others out. But definitely, hip-hop from the '80s, from the '90s. Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Prince, which is real obvious to a lot of people. Everybody like KRS-ONE to more contemporaries like Lauryn Hill and E-40, Nas, all of those people.

How did you and Pam meet?

Pam used to DJ for a lot of different groups, and we had a different DJ that was on our first EP that came out before our first album. He was just drinkin' a lot and when he came to the studio he was just too drunk to do his parts. And this was back when studio time used to cost lots. I was back at UPS, spending my whole check on, you know, like half a night of studio time, so it wasn't cool. Pam, we had seen her around, but we approached her at the Tupac album release party for his first album. She was DJ-ing there and we approached her.

Do you feel like you're adding to the political landscape with some of your songs? You have a strong message. How would you describe your agenda?

Well, I want to be part of just kinda tenderizing the soil, so organizations can come plant the seed and help the movement grow.

What do you think about the state of rap/hip-hop in general? How would you describe the landscape of the mainstream and the state of underground?

Well, I think that underground — inside that genre there are a lot of groups that can sell 250,000 albums with not a lot of money spent on promotion. Inside the genre of "commercial hip-hop" there are artists that get a lot of money spent on them and might sell less than 100,000.

What about the negative messages in some of the music?

I mean, well, I don't know that there is more negative than what was already there. Put it like this, we hear all this stuff about music making people do crazy stuff, but the reality is this: Since the 1960s, poverty has gone up while crime hasn't gone anywhere near as far up. That's telling me that people are actually more peaceful than they were, people are actually doing less stuff.

What little crime that does happen has to be because of this overwhelming economic stress that's happening, and the music that is being made, stuff that's being called negative, a lot of it deals with trying to survive and trying to figure it all out.

On the other hand, people talk about "Oh, there's too much teenage pregnancy" and stuff like that, but my grandparents had kids when they were 12 and they lived together, and that was common.

That whole discussion is really part of the criminalization of the image of black people. We have all these discussions that really have no basis in fact.

And you think that rap has no part in that? You feel like that's skewed?

I feel like because of the criminalization of the image of black folks, there's a criminalization of the image of hip-hop and of the artists that make it. I would say, it's not so much that rap/hip-hop has a part in changing the image of black people, it's just that the image of those songs has really changed.

When we (The Coup) were getting on MTV and BET and stuff, our videos weren't hot so they couldn't play them. At the time it was the "pool party" thing; that's what they meant. So a lot of rappers now are like, "We gotta have that one video."

Don't you feel like that's "selling out" to a degree?

You can only call it "sellin' out" if you were committed to a cause in the first place.

The Coup continues the "Pick a Bigger Weapon" tour in states nationwide. The album is in stores now.