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    Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
    Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
    Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
    Audiobook19 hours

    Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

    Written by Jeff Chang

    Narrated by Mirron Willis

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-civil rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview, and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight, and style.

    Based on original interviews with DJs, b-boys, rappers, graffiti writers, activists, and gang members, with unforgettable portraits of many of hip-hop's forebears, founders, and mavericks, including DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D, and Ice Cube, Can't Stop Won't Stop chronicles the events, the ideas, the music, and the art that marked the hip-hop generation's rise from the ashes of the '60s into the new millennium. Here is a powerful cultural and social history of the end of the American century, and a provocative look into the new world that the hip-hop generation created.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 2, 2016
    ISBN9781515978534
    Author

    Jeff Chang

    Jeff Chang has been a hip-hop journalist for more than a decade and has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Village Voice, Vibe, The Nation, URB, Rap Pages, Spin, and Mother Jones. He is the author of several books, including the American Book Award-winning Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. He was a founding editor of Colorlines Magazine, senior editor at Russell Simmons’s 360hiphop.com, and cofounder of the influential hip-hip label SoleSides, now Quannum Projects. He lives in California.

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    Reviews for Can't Stop Won't Stop

    4/5

    136 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Nicely covers the social/political environment around the development of hip-hop, but starts to become focused on a select few artists (Public Enemy, N.W.A.) as the book goes on. By the end it's all social with little on the music. Still, a very good read and illuminating in showing how the times influenced the music and visa versa.
    • 3/5
      50. Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff ChangIntroduction DJ Kool Hercreader: Mirron Willispublished: 2005 (2016 on audio)format: 19:33 Libby audiobook (560 pages in hardcover)acquired: Librarylistened: Aug 20-31, Sep 11-25rating: 3The book is dated, but what do I know? Outside the Beastie Boys and the maybe not-quite-Hip-Hop Red Hot Chili Peppers, I kind of missed this whole thing. Chang, currently the executive director the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, at Stanford University, writes an incomplete selective history of Hip-Hip and the cultures it came from. He's both fascinating and frustrating, but more the former than the later. He presents an elaborate narrative from the Jamaica of Bob Marley, to the Jamaica-immigrant driven street Hip-Hop scene in the black and latino New York inner and suburban neighborhoods, to the take off of Hip-Hop in the mainstream culture and arts. He picks places to focus on, especially Marley, DJ Kool Herc (who wrote the introduction), Grandmaster Flash, graffiti artists like the Fab 5, to Public Enemy, to, when the book finally leaves New York for LA (about 3/4's in), Ice Cube, and NWA, and finally a long take on the magazine The Source. And he ties it all in, mostly, the Jamaican politics, a painfully detailed and confusion history of certain aspects of the New York gangs, police violence against blacks, over and over, and more and more horrifying, to Watts, Compton and the Rodney King Riots. But the book has some narrative issue at this point. Did the LA riots in 1992 really impact Hip-Hop? I couldn't tell from this, because Chang changes course attacking the music industry for it's failure to identify that Hip-Hop was the about the fastest growing music market in the 1990's, and then attacking US policy for allowing Clear Channel to sterilize American radio on a national scale. That's a lot, and wanders off in way too much detail on a lot of this stuff, which is maybe ok. But there are gaping holes, and, as far as I can tell, he didn't interview anyone. He just quotes news articles and published sources. While reading it I looked up some YouTube videos on the early history of Hip-Hop and found a world of characters and names and voices he barely indicates exists. Most of these people are still around and they want to talk about the era, the technology tricks, the personalities, the crowds and cultural feedback. There is so much rich information, so much not here. It's a major oddball flaw, and one he never expresses. You get his summaries defined as complete. They're not.Still, a good experience, and I'm glad I listened. I have a lot of music to explore...
    • 5/5
      This was exactly what I was hoping it to be...touching on racial, gender, social, cultural, historical, political, and economic issues in addition to the development of the music itself. Exhaustive but only scratches the surface. So much of it kept me thinking, "The more things change..." and I can't help but hope for an update for everything that's happened since 2005.
    • 4/5
      A great book I didn't want to end, and would have liked more about the emerging hip-hop centers of Atlanta and St. Louis, which were mentioned only in passing in the final chapter. But a great overview of not only the origins of hip hop but its role in the activism of the black (and Asian and Latino) communities.

      Original read in January 2011, re-read in May 2013
    • 3/5
      This is THE scoop on hip-hop. Chang does a wonderful job of tying it all together. If someone says they love hip-hop, just pop this open and start asking questions; this is the connoisseur's guide.
    • 3/5
      I found this a bit disappointing to be honest, but that's in large part because I was expecting something different. Chang doesn't really get into music/graffiti/lyrics/dancing very much at all; he does, though, do a great job of explaining the social context in which all that art was produced. So keep in mind that that's what you're getting - a history of gang culture, youth politics and (most impressively) urban geography at the end of the twentieth century - and you'll probably enjoy the book.

      That said, there are major flaws, starting with the fact that it's hard to read. Not because Chang doesn't write clearly, because he does. It's just *literally* hard to read; the font's a couple of pixels better than Comic Sans. Who in their right mind sets a book in a sans-serif font? Are the publishers trying to send a whole generation of readers blind? More importantly, Chang's incredible research - really, amazing - is undermined by an overly simplistic political frame, which you could pretty much describe as 'Fuck the Man.' Sometimes the Man has it coming. Sometimes whoever it is that isn't the man has to take some of the blame. But you'd never know that from this book; here it's *always* the Man's fault and His alone.

      So there's a weird 90s vibe to the whole thing. In the Prelude Chang writes that 'Hip-Hop Generation' describes, among other things, "the turn from politics to culture." I have no idea what he was thinking when he wrote that, because his book is almost entirely about politics, activism, in particular. That makes the book tendentious: chapters on Public Enemy and (mid-period) Ice Cube, but nothing on ATCQ or any of the other late-80s early 90s geniuses? A chapter on The Source, but nothing on the indies that emerged after that magazine imploded? And, weirdest of all, chapters on the Million Man March and anti-Globalization protests, but only a passing mention of the incredible music of that time (Wu-Tang, for instance, is mentioned only as an antagonist of The Source's editorial crew, and in one line about nineties paranoia). Obviously this isn't because he doesn't know his stuff; he's forgotten more about hip-hop than I'll ever know (seriously, the man co-founded SoleSides. He knows his stuff). It's just that the book turns out to be more a history of many-raced activists, and has very little to say about music. Here's hoping he brings his writing style and impeccable research skills to a book about the music, graf, and dancing.
    • 3/5
      Aúnque a ratos me ha costado un poco seguirlo y ha puesto a prueba mi nivel de inglés, me ha gustado que me explicasen algo de los orígenes del hip hop. Sólo recomendable si te interesa esa música.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the most comprehensive histories of Hip Hop, written by Hip Hop journalist and activist Jeff Chang. It has an introduction by Hip Hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc and it is a fascinating as well as an instructive read.
    • 5/5
      Of course it will resonate most with hip-hop fans, but Can't Stop Won't Stop is about far more than music. This is a compelling and enlightening take on hip-hop's roots and growth over the last 30 years.
    • 5/5
      The first 200 pages cover hip-hop through 1982. I don't think any other book has given the early days (which began well before "Rapper's Delight") that much space.465 pages of truly essential reading for anyone that considers themselves a "head." Chang does a phenomenal job of juxtaposing hip-hop and history, giving the music a context. My only complaint: it ends somewhat abruptly at the 2000 DNC protests. It's a good ending, mind you, but I felt like it snuck up on me.Great, in that it gives true historical and cultural context to the movement and albums that have shaped hip-hop over the last 30+ years. I look forward to seeing a follow-up in another 15 years.