Boots Riley continues to bolster his status as one of the most consistently exciting artists of our time with I Love Boosters, out next month. But first, Complex has the exclusive on which songs—from YoungBoy Never Broke Again to Ella Fitzgerald, and more—are soundtracking key moments in the lives of the Keke Palmer-led film’s cast.
In a new video, seen up top, Palmer is joined by fellow I Love Boosters stars Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Eiza González, and Poppy Liu (collectively known in the film as “The Velvet Gang”) for a round of “Who Has the Aux?” The first prompt, “What song would you listen to when you’re feeling yourself?,” naturally, led to Ackie and Palmer reciting a bit of Nicki Minaj’s Beyoncé-featuring 2014 track “Feeling Myself.”
From there, tracks from a wide range of artists were given shoutouts, including DMX, Liu Huan, System of a Down, Daniel Caesar, NBA YoungBoy, Ella Fitzgerald, and more.
“We could keep going,” Paige, also recently seen in HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry series, added as the video drew to a close. “We love music.”
Mercifully, NEON is set to bring I Love Boosters to a theater near you starting May 22. Tickets are on sale now. Palmer and company are joined in the expertly assembled cast by Demi Moore, Will Poulter, and LaKeith Stanfield. The latter, notably, previously worked with Riley on 2018’s Sorry to Bother You.
“This will be a crazy one,” Riley, whose latest film shares a title with a song from his The Coup catalog, teased of I Love Boosters back in 2024.
More recently, Riley described the film, his first project since 2023’s (also excellent) I’m a Virgo series, as sitting “right in between the Boots Riley genre and some other shit that I don’t know.”
