Can't Stop Won't Stop

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

Welcome to Jeff Chang's website.

The Total Chaos Hip-Hop Forum Series has concluded. Thank you to our panelists, our sponsoring venues, the Ford Foundation, and especially the thousands of you across the country who were a part of these groundbreaking discussions. Check out the exclusive podcast of our June 14, 2007 event at the Walker Art Center, featuring hip-hop graphic design/visual arts legend Cey Adams, Twin Cities graffiti pioneer and activist Roger Cummings, acclaimed filmmaker and scholar Rachel Raimist, and a very lively intergenerational audience.

You can still pick up Can't Stop Won't Stop on Picador Books in the US, on Ebury Press in the UK and Australia, on Allia in France, and on Reverb/SL Books in Sweden. You can still pick up Total Chaos: The Art And Aesthetics of Hip-hop on Civitas Books. Why wait any longer?

What's next? More journalism on the movement, culture, politics, and the world. Translations of Can't Stop Won't Stop for Brazil, Finland, Serbia, and Japan. A completely redesigned website featuring a long-promised archive of Jeff's works. More time back in the cave. Your boy will be venturing out sporadically for supplies. Check here regularly to be up on all the sightings. And, of course, stay up on the infamous blog for your semi-daily dose of rants and time-zapping things.

End the wars now. Peace is not the world to play.

The First...

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Can’t Stop Won’t Stop Q+A
Q: Can't Stop Won't Stop is subtitled "A History of the Hip-Hop Generation", which seems to me to be rather distinct from calling it "A History of Hip-Hop". Is there a distinction between the two?

A: I'm not interested in writing about hip-hop just in terms of rap music—which is what most people might think when they hear the word "hip-hop"—or even just as a cultural force encompassing the "four elements". Hip-hop is all that and—to flip dead prez's epigram—it's also bigger than all that. Hip-hop offers a generational worldview that encompasses the shoes you choose to whether you're inclined to vote or not to how you understand the issue of race. So I use this worldview to look at the last three decades of the American century.

Q: In 2004, there was a celebration commemorating the 25th anniversary of "Rapper's Delight", which many people see as the beginning of hip-hop. Your history starts in 1968, which is more than a decade prior to that. Why?

For the rest of the Q+A click here.

Excerpt:
Making A Name
How DJ Kool Herc Lost His Accent And Started Hip-Hop
It has become myth, a creation myth, this West Bronx party at the end of the summer in 1973. Not for its guests—a hundred kids and kin from around the way, nor for the setting—a modest recreation room in a new apartment complex; not even for its location—two miles north of Yankee Stadium, near where the Cross-Bronx Expressway spills into Manhattan. Time remembers it for the night DJ Kool Herc made his name.
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Buzz
+ 2005 American Book Award
+ 2006 Asian American Literary Award
+ 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award
+ 2006 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research
+ San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller
+ Blender Magazine
Best Book of 2005
+ New York Magazine
Best Music Book of 2005
+ Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Best Music Book of 2005
+ Boston Phoenix
#2 Nonfiction Book of 2005
+ New York Press
2005 Best New NYC Book
+ Boldtype Notable Book
+ Flavorpill
2005 F-List
+ The Progressive
Favorite Books of 2005
+ CBC Canada
2005 Arts Top 100

"Obsessively researched, beautifully written, Chang's book is the funky, bootleg, B-side remix of late-20th century American history."
-Time Magazine

"His scope is operatic, sprawling, and concerns itself with the people, places and politics that drove hip-hop from its infancy...perhaps Chang is hip-hop America's Howard Zinn."
-Salon

Click to The Complete Buzz

Latest post:
Students Occupy The New School
» Go to blog.

Dates

Upcoming Appearances
January 14
8:30 AM
EVENT :: North Star News Prize Ceremony (NYC)
February 7
12:30 PM
TALK :: Re:Definition USF Conference (San Francisco)
February 9
TALK :: Washington and Jefferson College (Washington, PA)
February 12
TALK :: Boston College
February 28
2:00 PM
DISCUSSION :: With Marc Bamuthi Joseph : Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art
For a complete list of Jeff's appearances, check Dates.