Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

Description

Title: Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
Subtitle: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
Author: Jeff Chang
Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 560
Dimensions: 19.7 x 12.5 x 3 cm. /7.8 x 4.9 x 1.2 inch.
Published: 2007

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.

The birth of hip-hop out of the ruin of the South Bronx is a story that has been told many times, but never with the cinematic scope and the analytic force that Jeff Chang brings to it. . . . This is one of the most urgent and passionate histories of popular music ever written. –The New Yorker

This is a book that should be on the shelves of every high school and college library, an engaging and entertaining full-blown excursion into American inner-city culture’s rapid proliferation into every nook and cranny of culture at large. –Los Angeles Weekly

Chang tells these stories beautifully . . . provocative. –The New York Times Book Review

When Hip-Hop 101 becomes a requirement, Jeff Chang’s history of the turmoil that begat this beloved culture will be the go-to textbook. –Vibe magazine

The most important new genre of the last quarter century finally has a sweeping historical overview as powerful as the music with Can’t Stop Won’t Stop . . . the best-argued, most thoroughly researched case for hip-hop as a complete and truly American culture. –Chicago Sun-Times

Jeff Chang’s new and necessary book . . . delivers a vivid account of the last third of the American twentieth century. . . . The book is as much a cultural history as a music history. –The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

His scope is operatic, sprawling, and concerns itself with the people, places, and politics that drove hip-hop from its infancy. . . . It is essentially a people’s history . . . perhaps Jeff Chang is hip-hop America’s Howard Zinn. –Salon.com

Flow without the ego, intellectualism without Ivory Tower disdain, and, finally, history with heart and passion and fire: Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop manages to go from wide-lens overview to pinpoint accuracy in covering the biggest cultural-political movement of our time. A true accomplishment. –Farai Chideya, author of Trust and The Color of Our Future

Jeff Chang is a master alchemist, spinning narrative gold from a weave of sociology, history, political theory, and old fashioned boom-bap. . .Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is one of the best books yet written on the shifting, tumultuous history of hip-hop culture and the generation of adherents it spat onto the American and global landscape. It is a tour-de-force. –Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, author of Gunshots In My Cook-Up: Bits of Hip-Hop Caribbean Life An exuberant and revelatory history of the inner-city cultural revolution that still rocks the world.

Jeff Chang is hip-hop’s John Reed. –Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums One of our most insightful commentators on urban music takes a panoramic survey of hip-hop’s entirety. . .

Authoritative, incisive, and entertaining, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is a massive achievement. –Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84 and Generation Ecstasy Don’t be misled; this is not just another rap book. . .

inflammatory, illuminating, and anything but myopic, the scope of Chang’s work is awe-inspiring. –DJ Shadow, hip-hop artist, Endtroducing and The Private Press

This book belongs on your shelf next to Criminal Minded, Illmatic and All Eyez On Me. –William Jelani Cobb, PhD, author of To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic Orale pues

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop draws from the fire, verve, rage, injustices, pains, victories, and creativity of a whole generation of marginalized, forgotten, pissed-on and pissed-off youth. –Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA and Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times

Jeff Chang backspins the un-interrogated truisms that plague so much hip hop scholarship. . .Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is a fluid, incisive analysis built from the ground up, with plenty of funky breakdowns. –Adam Mansbach, author of Angry White Boy and Shackling Water

Has any scholar ever loved hip hop so well–and taken it as seriously–as Jeff Chang does in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop? –Bill Adler, author of Tougher Than Leather From the intellectual roots of Black cultural and political movements to the emergence of hip-hop activism

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is the most comprehensive book out on hip-hop. –Henry Chalfant, co-producer Style Wars, co-author of Subway Art and Spraycan Art

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop brings us so much closer to fully understanding the complexities that inspired the Hip-Hop Generation. –Mark Anthony Neal, author of Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation

Jeff Chang has created a new rhythm in hip-hop writing. A must-read and an instant classic. –B+ (Brian Cross), photographer, producer/director of Keepintime, and author of It’s Not About A Salary