Can’t Stop Won’t
Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop
Generation by Jeff Chang
I don’t want to hear
people saying that they don’t want to be role models. You might already have my son’s
attention. Let’s get that clear. When I’m telling him “don’t walk that way,
don’t talk that way,” you’re walking that way and talking that way. Don’t just be drug dealer, like another
pusher. Cut the crap. That’s escape. That’s the easy way out. You have the kid’s attention. I’m asking you to help me raise him up.
Those lines are from DJ Kool Herc’s forward to this
comprehensive, scholarly and deeply opinionated history of hip-hop. Chang begins before the beginning,
establishing that each of the big three fathers of the genre – Herc,
Grandmaster Flash and Africa Bambaata – are West Indian immigrants and that
their approach to music grows out of the highly political practice of sound
system dances in Kingston and other cities of Jamaica, and continues through to
the more pleasure centered work of Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre.
Chang is not simply examining the roots of the music here,
but arguing that hip-hop has always been a political voice of the black
community. He persuasively argues that
both MCs and DJs have been heavily involved with street gangs and have consistently
worked as part of anti-violence strains within those gangs. He places hip-hop within the context of
African American self-help tradition arguing that often the message of rap is
confused by the fact that the intended audience is black youth who experience
street violence from a different perspective than white critics. He sees the primary work of hip-hop through
the 1980s as voicing positive alternatives for embattled communities.
Chang’s is a fan’s perspective. He makes no attempt to hide his love of the
music and chooses the artists he focuses on accordingly (plenty of Public
Enemy, very little Tupac). However, his
primary focus remains the music’s social impact and Chang does an excellent job
of placing variations of hip-hop in historical and cultural context. In that sense, the book becomes a vivid
social history of the 1980s and I had a wonderful time reliving moments I had
lived through but perhaps not given proper attention. If you want to rethink Eleanor Bumpers and
Michael Stewart in addition to Flavor Flav and Ice Cube, you will want to read
this book.
Chang is especially strong on hip-hop’s meaning to other
minority communities and writes with clarity and insight about the tensions
between blacks and Asians in the 1980s – in both Brooklyn and Los Angeles. He is weaker when discussing the images of
women in hip-hop and I couldn’t help get the feeling that he was letting his
love of NWA get in the way of his analysis of their music. It is important to look at misogyny in
hip-hop within the context of misogyny in pop music generally (“Runaround Sue”
anyone?) but Chang doesn’t go there.
The book includes an extensive appendix that lists
supplemental readings, films and an extensive playlist of music for each
chapter. His music recommendations alone
are worth the price of the book.
There is no doubt that the history and significance of
hip-hop will be subject of ongoing debate and I will leave the details of that
debate to those more knowledgeable than myself, but clearly this is a book that
will be important to that debate for some time.
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