Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
Jeff Chang
Hip-hop is now a global multi-billion pound industry. It has spawned superstars all across the world. There have been tie-in clothing lines, TV stations, film companies, cosmetics lines. It even has its own sports, its own art style, its own dialect. It is an all-encompassing lifestyle.
But where did hip-hop culture begin? Who created it? How did hip-hop become such a phenomenon?
Jeff Chang, an American journalist, has written the most comprehensive book on hip-hop to date. He introduces the major players who came up with the ideas that form the basic elements of the culture. He describes how it all began with social upheavals in Jamaica, the Bronx, the Black Belt of Long Island and South Central LA. He not only provides a history of the music, but a fascinating insight into the social background of young black America.
Stretching from the early 70s through to the present day, this is the definitive history of hip-hop. It will be essential reading for all DJs, B-Boys, MCs and anyone with an interest in American history.
Product Details
About Jeff Chang
Reviews for Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
Q
Energetic and exhilarating ... There is a fearless sweep to this book. A distinct achievement
Daily Telegraph
Inflammatory, illuminating, and anything but myopic, the scope of Chang's work is awe-inspiring
DJ Shadow Can't Stop Won't Stop knows hip hop to be the most significant musical-cultural revolution since rock and roll and tells its story from the bottom up
Word
Has to rate as one of the most comprehensive studies of hip-hop history yet published
Rock Sound
Chang's prodigiously researched and politically sophisticated ode to a different era is not only insightful, but moving and enraging
New Statesman
This book is my bible
DJ Bob Sinclair, Mail on Sunday
Don't be misled; this is not just another rap book. Can't Stop Won't Stop is a potent political treatise, a glance at the 20th century through the social lens of hip-hop. Inflammatory, illuminating, and anything but myopic, the scope of Chang's work is awe-inspiring.
DJ Shadow Can't Stop Won't Stop is an epic rendering of the hip hop generation and all its brilliance, contradictions, aspirations and artistic beauty. In these pages, Jeff Chang chronicles the personalities, events, ideas and movements that shaped hip hop from the days of nameplates and fat laces to its present transnational glory. This book belongs on your shelf next to Criminal Minded, Illmatic and All Eyez On Me.
William Jelani Cobb, Ph.D, author of To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic Before now, much of hip-hop's history has been a cross between personal narrative and music commentary. Can't Stop Won't Stop goes to the next level, documenting hip-hop's cross cultural, political, economic and global intricacies. For too long it's been nearly impossible for hip-hop kids to find themselves on the pages of history. With Can't Stop, Won't Stop, Jeff Chang takes them there.
Bakari Kitwana, author of The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture