Boots Riley: The Rolling Stone Studio Live at SXSW

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Rolling Stone

Music, Music Interviews, Music Commentary

4.0 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2026

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Boots Riley joins The Rolling Stone Studio Live at SXSW to talk about I Love Boosters, his riotous new satire about a crew of Oakland retail thieves led by Keke Palmer and facing off against a fast-fashion mogul played by Demi Moore. In conversation with Rolling Stone film critic David Fear, Riley traces the film’s origins back to his long-running fascination with “boosters,” and explains how his filmmaking extends the same political and cultural instincts behind his music with The Coup. He also breaks down why Palmer is, in his words, a “f**king national treasure,” and why he’s taking the film on the road to college campuses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I probably spend an unreasonable amount of my life with headphones on, often because I'm trying
0:05.4	to get an episode ready for you, the listener, whether I'm prepping for interviews or going back
0:10.3	through a discography for the fifth time trying to catch something I missed. That's kind of the job.
0:15.6	And my new headphones, the JBL Live 780s, are making my job a lot more fun. It's all about the sound. There's a warmth
0:23.7	and clarity that you don't always get from wireless headphones, spatial audio that really works,
0:29.5	and noise canceling powerful enough to zap out a busy office or a crowded street. The battery just
0:36.5	goes and goes.
0:39.1	It lasts up to 80 hours.
0:41.9	And when it's running low, five minutes plugged in,
0:43.2	get you four more hours.
0:46.7	They come in black, white, blue, green, and champagne.
0:48.0	I went with black.
0:48.7	It looks great.
0:51.9	If you care about how your music actually sounds,
0:54.2	and I have to assume you do if you're listening to this.
0:57.0	Check out the JBL Live 780s.
1:01.4	Welcome to the Rolling Stone Studio live at South by Southwest.
1:04.3	We are here with a bona fide legend today.
1:07.6	We are here with one of the members of the coup,
1:11.6	easily one of the best hip-hop outfits to come out of the Bay Area.
1:17.9	We are here with the writer-director behind Sorry to Bother You and the Amazon TV show I'm a Virgo.
1:22.3	We're here with a political activist. We're here with a lifelong resident of Oakland,
	...

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