Can't Stop Won't Stop

[lady_mactrouser]

Many thanks to Dick Umbrage, who recommended Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang to me. It's a great read, tracing the development of hip-hop from its beginnings as a teenage fad confined to a seven-square-mile area of the Bronx to its present status as an international cultural - and marketing - phenomenon.

Comments

[dickumbrage]

the other thing that bugged me about the book is that he subordinated major stylistic developments -- i'm thinking principally of the 1986-1993 long island scene: JVC-FORCE, EPMD, de la soul, etc. -- to his dialectical treatment of rap history. (in an interview i did with chang, he confessed to being a closet hegelian, to whom such things as linear continuity do not matter.) but, as he says over and over again, the book is not meant to be definitive.

however, if he hadn't overlooked the LI rappers who weren't in the thrall of the NOI, i think public enemy would have appeared more aberrational.

[lady_mactrouser]

Well, he does touch on Tribe Called Quest, but I agree in general he skips over the entire Native Tongues group as well as others.

At the same time, I can see why explaining Public Enemy was such a central project for him - he writes a lot about the sources of white backlash against specific groups and songs (and graffiti, and gangs, which he argues are conflated with non-white youth culture in general). Public Enemy is certainly one of the richest sites for doing just that.

But I would have like to see him address the larger context, maybe as a prelude to the "commercial/conscious" rap marketing split he digs into later in the book.

[dickumbrage]

word. i definitely enjoyed the public enemy chapter, especially the scene that has a twenty-three year old chuck d wondering why people keep assuming he's the voice of black politics.

in addition to its attention to context, strengths of the book involve unpacking contradictions -- the sugarhill gang was a thoroughly "inauthentic" commercial creation, but sugarhill records was one of the only labels owned by blacks -- and addressing contingencies -- if it hadn't been for that sugarhill gang record, rap might have simply disappeared. and i felt that the public enemy bit could have used a bit more of that.

[lady_mactrouser]

Yes, it becomes more straight-up biography in the Public Enemy chapter, but I think that's partly because they're so sui generis - they created a very distinct brand of hip-hop, but they have few real heirs that I can think of - certainly there are groups like The Coup, but they've never really found the same mass-market audience.

One of my favorite scenes (I think it's in that chapter) is the guy at the hip-hop activism panel saying, "What, we're going to make an 18-year-old rapper into a political leader? On the basis of what? That he has mad flow?"

[dickumbrage]

by "definitive" i think i meant "exhaustive."

[elsacapuntas]

this book is at the top of my list of beach reading. in fact, i think i need to plan a trip to the beach just to read this book.