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  Release Date: April 25, 2006
  Website: The Coup Website
  Label: Epitaph / Ada

The Coup “Pick A Bigger Weapon” Album Review
I’ve always been a big fan of The Coup. I like the way front man Boots Riley flows, especially how he promotes a revolutionary mind state within entertaining and often funny stories. I’m always interested in what he has to say. And although some of those tough guy misogynist rap fans (c’mon, we all know a couple) clown on me for this, I think Pam the Funkstress makes some super dope beats and practices expert turntablism. She is one of my favorite hip-hop producers around today.

As expected, “Pick a Bigger Weapon” easily met my approval. I bumped this album almost non-stop for like two weeks. It was my New York City subway album . the one that seemed to provide the perfect backdrop to riding all over NYC in the subway. However, the entire week I kept hearing a verse that I didn’t quite get. It was in track four, “My Favorite Mutiny,” which featured Talib Kweli and Black Thought of the Roots.

In his verse, Boots mentioned Rosa Parks and Gil-Scott Heron, both people most of us know about. But then he mentioned Ricky Ross, a person I have never heard of, and associated him with the CIA and crack. This interested me. I mean, I’ve heard many rappers talk about a possible connection between the CIA and America’s cocaine trade, but have never taken the initiative to research the validity of this claim. Using Ricky Ross as a starting point, I was able to find out some crazy interesting stuff …

Ricky Ross, the CIA and Crack Cocaine
Aiight . Ironically, the story of Ricky Ross, the CIA and crack cocaine starts with the countries of Iran and Iraq. For pretty much all of the 1980s, Iran and Iraq were at war. In 1983, a pro-Iranian militant group called Hezbollah took thirty hostages, six being American, in response to the imprisonment of members of an ally organization called Al-Dawa. In an effort to make use of Iran’s association with these militant groups and improve strained relations with the country, the Reagan Administration transferred weapons to Iran to aid in the Iran-Iraq war for virtually the entire duration of the conflict.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, the country of Nicaragua was having quite a conflict of its own. In 1979, a leftist liberation political party called the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship that ruled Nicaragua. However, the Sandinistas had a group of opponents that came to be known as Contras. The Contras challenged the Sandinistas through what some may consider a terrorist-style campaign, attacking mostly civilian targets and killing many people. The Contras were opposed by many Nicaraguans and human rights groups due to such brutal tactics.

Now around 1985, the United States decided to markup the prices of the weapons it was selling to Iran so that the increased profits could be used to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. This act became known as the Iran-Contra affair, and is seen as one of the biggest political scandals in the history of our country. The Reagan Administration apparently wanted to overthrow the democratically-elected Sandinista government because they felt it ruled through Cuban-style socialism, a type of government frowned upon at a time when the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and hence democracy and communism, was still very much real.

However, the conflict still needed funding, as demonstrated when the United States House of Representatives rejected Reagan’s request for over $36 million in aid to the Contras. Now according to some statements, the CIA helped groups of Nicaraguan Contras flood the streets of South Central Los Angeles with cocaine in order to create the revenue needed to fund the Contras’ rebellion. This action is often credited with the crack epidemic that ravaged South Central LA during the eighties, and spread through the majority of the United States.

And that leads us to Ricky Ross, who is currently serving a recently-reduced twenty year sentence in prison for attempted purchase of a large quantity of cocaine. Many sources believe that Ricky Ross was the connection between the CIA and Nicaraguan drug dealers. The theory is that Ross would buy the cocaine from the drug traffickers, who would then funnel the money back to the CIA-supported Contras in Nicaragua. Now although this theory is heavily disputed, most sources seem to feel that enough evidence exists to connect the CIA to the Contras, and therefore enough to entertain the possibility that the CIA may have been involved in the Nicaraguan drug trade.

Amazing …
Now I don’t know about you, but I find the entire Iran-Contra affair to be completely amazing. Not just for the political maneuvering and scandal, but for the simple fact that I had never heard it like that before. Shit, man … if Boots Riley wouldn’t have mentioned a guy named Ricky Ross in one of his songs, I might never have been inspired to research the events that surrounded his story, which are very important events in current history.

When I learned about Nicaraguan Sandinistas and Contras or the Iran-Iraq war in school, the textbooks never mentioned the possibility of such shady American involvement, or how it may have led to increased drug trafficking in our country. Essentially, you have to read it for yourself to get the sides of the story they don’t want you to hear. And that leads me once again to the point I always make about revolutionary topics in hip-hop music . they have the power to inform people of different perspectives and sides of the story so we can attempt to read through the lines existent in the storybooks of our history.

So check out The Coup and their latest album, “Pick a Bigger Weapon.” You just might hear something that makes you want to weigh the facts for yourself. Peace.

Related:
If you like The Coup’s unique brand of politically-motivated revolutionary hip-hop, you should also check out M-1 “Confidential”, Public Enemy “New Whirl Odor and dead prez and the Outlawz “Can’t Sell Dope Forever”.