You Got to Read This: “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Nation” by Jeff Chang
A good friend once told me that people born after 1982 don’t know hip-hop. That statement not only helps make sense of the decline of the genre at the hands of younger artists, it means there are a lot of young ‘heads in need of a little education.
In Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Nation, Jeff Chang takes his readers to school without turning pedantic. It’s the rare hip-hop tract that combs through the music and the social movement with the sensitivity of a fan and the sophisticated artistry of an intelligent critic. If you don’t believe me (and, really, who the fuck am I, anyway?), take the hard-won praise from The New Yorker, Vibe magazine and Salon.com as trustworthy witnesses of Chang’s formidable achievement.
The foreword by DJ Kool Herc begins a narrative that follows the story of hip-hop from its Jamaican origins to its various artistic mutations on the streets of New York City and, later, to the hoo-ridden streets of Compton. Chang spotlights the drama of New York City graffiti scene with the same deft erudition with which he tackles the social importance of Chuck D. and Public Enemy, refusing to impose a monolithic fiction on the polyphonic movement.
The book is more historical narrative than argument, but Chang does often take the leftist perspective that hip-hop is best understood in economic terms. Even in those points — when one might be tempted to fill pages with lists of eye-popping statistics — Change opts for evocative storytelling that dramatizes history of hip-hop in resolutely personal terms. Through it all, Chang effectively ties hip-hop to the larger fabric of American life and global dilemma as he explores the collisions between the hip-hop and apartheid, the Latin-American drug trade and the post-Civil Rights era. His treatment of the LA riots is a poignant reminder of an important event that has perhaps already disappeared to our collective unconscious.
If you’re interested in understanding why Nas thinks hip-hop is dead, you should read this. I got my copy at Half-Price Books for the small price of this blog entry.
