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It was one of those serious "oh, shit!" moments. In 2001, The Coup was set to release Party Music, an album sporting a photo illustration on the cover of rapper Boots Riley and DJ Pam the Funkstress blowing up the World Trade Center. Then, 9/11 happened, and the politically pointed joke suddenly wasn't so funny.

Naturally, the album cover was changed before the CD's commercial release, but it had already been widely seen on the Internet, and Riley became fresh meat for rabid, right-wing pundits. Still, if you thought The Coup would soft-pedal its message in the wake of what amounted to a horrific coincidence, you don't know Boots.

"Bush and Hussein together in bed/Giving H-E-A-D: head," goes the taunting schoolyard refrain to "Head (of State)," a song from The Coup's new CD, Pick a Bigger Weapon. "Y'all muthafuckas heard what we said/Billions made and millions dead." Then, there's the soul ballad "Baby, Let's Have a Baby Before Bush Do Somethin' Crazy."

"I think that, as things get worse for people, they are more receptive," Riley says of public reaction to his harsh critique of the Bush administration. "People are searching out ideas and music that affirm what they've been going through."

Speaking by phone from the road, Riley converses in a raspy croak, his voice strained by 2 1/2 weeks of nearly nightly gigs. En route from Asheville, N.C., to Charlottesville, Va., he, his bandmates and their tour manager pull over to grab some lunch.

"Somebody get me the, uh, Philly cheese melt," Riley calls out.

"We run out of money," a voice replies.

"No, no, use it as a credit card," Riley answers. "And then, sign my name."

While finances may be tight, The Coup has definitely stepped up in the world. Pick a Bigger Weapon is the band's first release for the Epitaph label, an imprint best known for punk acts such as Rancid and Bad Religion and a decidedly bigger and better-organized outfit than The Coup has worked with before. "The first time I ever had a marketing meeting was the beginning of this year," Riley explains. "It was like, 'Plan one: Get the word out. Plan two: Get the word out. Plan three: Get people to buy records.' "

The word is out, and the word is good. The album has been earning rave reviews for its mix of funky, good-times grooves barbed with sociopolitical comment and razor wire satire. On "Yes 'Em to Death," Riley and Dawud Allah portray a couple of working stiffs who have to endure a ration of crap from their boss at the fictional Omnimart. "You've got ass breath," Riley tells Allah, referring to the way his colleague kowtows to the insulting, patronizing manager. He then launches into the humorous but powerful "Ass-Breath Killers," which mentions a pill for the malady "made from the ground gunpowder of Haitian slaves and sweat from Seminoles who just wouldn't behave."

"What I try to do is like telling a good joke," Riley offers. "You know: You hear a good joke, and you're like, 'That's true, but I never thought about it that way.' So what I'm saying in my music is stuff that people already know but maybe haven't looked at from that angle."

Of course, Riley's viewpoint was shaped by his experiences as the son of political activists. On the track "Laugh/Love/Fuck," he describes the feeling of being "5 years old, eyelids half-mast/bedtime is 8 p.m., it's half-past/Tryna take me to bed, I'd make the mad dash/Scared in my sleep I'd miss what had passed."

"That is straight out of my own family life," he confirms. The house parties, he explains, were extensions of meetings his parents or elder sister attended in 1970s Detroit.

Riley's own political activism bloomed like his Afro in his teen years, after the family had moved to Oakland, Calif. In 11th grade, he organized a walkout at Oakland High School to protest year-round schooling, suddenly finding himself in command of 2,000 students and a bullhorn, the latter of which became the object of a tug of war with the principal. The contingent marched 2 1/2 miles to the school district's headquarters and ultimately prevailed.

People are still trying to wrest the bullhorn from Riley's grasp, as illustrated by the brouhaha over the Party Music cover art. He recalls a particularly heated exchange on Fox News' Hannity and Colmes and the added insult of hearing David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Pop Culture, analyze his lyrics after he had left the set. Still, his worst fears weren't realized. "What I had hoped wasn't going to happen, and didn't happen, was that my voice would be shut out of the debate," he says. "When I saw the American flags flying all over the screen on CNN [after the 9/11 attacks], I knew that there was about to be some kind of war, and I knew that I needed to be a voice of dissent."

Whether he's slamming the oil companies that have fueled the current misadventure in Iraq, the corporate world's dehumanizing treatment of workers or the economic hardships that lead some inner-city residents to sling crack, Riley continues to proclaim his dissent loudly. Just as important, though, Riley also wants to be a voice of assent.

"What I try to get across more in my music, more than information and point of view," he says, "is just the idea that you the listener are the one that's going to be able to make the difference, that has to make the difference. You have the power to change things."

The Coup will open for Les Claypool 7 p.m. Friday at Revolution, 200 W. Broward Blvd., in Fort Lauderdale. Tickets cost $17.50-$19.50. Call 954/727-0950 or visit Jointherevolution.net.