Boots Riley had been waiting nearly three decades to make a movie. The Chicago-native turned Bay Area resident studied film as an undergrad at San Francisco State but didn’t immediately become the next Spike Lee. He earned a record deal in the early 90s and focused instead on spreading his leftist messages through the medium of hip-hop. Riley released half a dozen raucous party rap/funk-rock albums with the group the Coup starting with 1993’s Kill My Landlord while managing to balance his art with political activism and community organizing—most famously as the public face of the Occupy movement in Oakland. But that doesn’t mean Riley ever gave up on his dream of becoming a filmmaker.

Sorry to Bother You opens in seven cities—including Chicago—today, and nationwide next week. Riley celebrated with the opposite of a red-carpet event. He spoke Thursday night at Socialism 2018, a four-day conference of 2,000 leftists that meets annually in Chicago, and then did a Q&A in the South Loop. The Reader chatted with Riley on-site at Socialism 2018 about Hollywood, class politics, and more. ✖

A minute ago you said, “I have a thing I want to do.” What is it exactly you’re trying to do?

I’ve had that experience writing songs—I try to get away from cliche and try to figure out what I actually think and feel about the world. Writers are just writing worlds that already exist and then have the rebellion edited out of them. Even when they’re creating new worlds, they are making fictional worlds where no one fights back. Or only one guy fights back. The not-so-innocent yet more practical version is that it won’t get funded if you write certain things. You get told, “Figure out the one guy who’s the hero.” Even if he’s fighting the corporation, he breaks through the door and exposes the corporate overlord. The guy walks away in shame and the secretary takes over the company.

If you’re not, then you have other ideas about the world. We get taught that letting your voice be heard is enough. And if that’s true, then you can make a film or a song and you’re really letting your voice be heard. But that’s just a myth created by the New Left that was leaving behind class struggle and workers and focusing on students. They thought students were the revolution.

Some critics have focused on your critique of big tech in this movie.