"Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the HipHop Generation:" Great book!

[RandomKoolzip]

I stayed up until 5 last night reading Jeff Chang's new book on the "History of the HipHop Generation."

Chang's a more than adequate writer; in fact he's pretty damn impressive at capturing the spirit of the best hiphop in his prose.

My quibble with the book is that he gets some of his facts wrong: for instance, he claims that graffiti was practically invented by teens in the Bronx in the early 70's, which I'm sure would offend the guy who used to write "Kilroy Was Here" all over bathroom walls in the 40's, if not the ancient Romans. And his contempt for rock is palpable; one needn't raze the acheivements of previous generations to prove the worth of one's own, which is what he does in the introduction and countless times within the body of the work.

To wit, he spends a lot of time acting as though hiphop was a real dividing line between "then" and "now," which of course, from his partisan vista, makes "then" look pretty awful; however, without the strives taken "then," "now" wouldn't exist. One of the bedrock points of the introduction is that hiphop supposedly rendered the concept of "generations" null and void, it killed off the boomers, etc. Which is odd, since the artists Chang loves so much made/make most of their living feeding off the records those boomers produced.

Also, it bugs me that he is unwilling to seperate the music from its context and focus on its aesthetics as a MUSIC; Chang sees the "four elements" as part of a whole unified culture without which, I presume, hiphop considered solely as a form of music would seem a bit aesthetically underfed. Certainly the tales of "graf" artists and "b-boys" are not as compelling, to me at least, as the tales concerning Public Enemy's formation, or the importation of Jamaican yard-parties into the Bronx via Kool Herc, or the recounting of how Grandmaster Flash invented "turntablism." These are the parts of the book that captivate and force you to take hiphop seriously as a music; the accounts of gallery openings and breakdancers drag the book down a bit.

But what remains is brilliant; if only for the first few chapters, which delineate the history of urban gang warfare in the Bronx, "Can't Stop Won't Stop" is worth the 24.50 I spent on it. And reading about hiphop's golden age, 1988-1991, almost brought a tear to my eye; look at how much we lost, and how little of worth has been in the spotlight since then. Maybe Chang's next project should be a full biography of Public Enemy or NWA: these groups deserve books of their own, and although Chang's accounts are more than adequate for an overview of a form, I wish I could get more anecdotes, more biographical info, and more analysis of the music itself.

To all the hiphop heads on DU, I promise: get this book and you will not be able to stop reading it.

[progmom]

1. My husband is reading that.

I can't wait until he's done so I can dive in. It looks great!

[RandomKoolzip]

2. It's definitely worth it.

Rock heads need to start coming to terms with hiphop, now that it's the dominant marketplace form. There's no better place to start than with this tome.

[RandomKoolzip]

3. kick for ChavezSpeakstheTruth

[RandomKoolzip]

4. kick for mark 414, too

[RandomKoolzip]

5. kick for cassandra uprising

go get this book!

[RandomKoolzip]

6. another kick for Chavez

[mark414]

7. haha thanks for the kick, i've been meaning to pick that up

and after a review like that i just might have to

i have read a few books that are definitely worth checking out if you haven't already;

'yes yes y'all' was put together by the experience music project in seattle and charlie ahearn (the guy who made wild style)...features interviews with all the OG hip hop heads, and uses their own words and stories to lay down the history of hip hop's first 10 years

nelson george also put out a killer one called 'hip hop america' and he just goes all over the place with it...short read but really well done

shit i could list a few more but i have neither the room nor time...thanks again though

p.s. you should post this in the hip hop forum too...we need to get that thing rollin

[mark414]

8. can i kick it?

yes i can



:kick:

[JohnKleeb]

9. If my brother weren't afraid of reading, he'd read that

:D kidding he may be a little dumb he read Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promise Land at age 12. I wanna read this book, it sounds neat.

[mark414]

10. ya gots to kick the thread up

[LoZoccolo]

11. Have you seen /Style Wars/?

http://www.stylewars.com

That actually was the thing that gave me the impression that hip-hop is a culture beyond the music.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

12. Actually, Koolzip, the practice of Graffiti Writing as we know it now

was invented in the Bronx by a handful of people like Seen and Stay High 149. I am reading an awesome book called Aerosol Nation. It was written by a Yale scholar as his thesis - its a really good book written as an anthropological/art history treatise of the "Graffiti"
movement.