Nicely covers the social/political environment around the development of hip-hop, but starts to become focused on a select few artists (Public Enemy, N.W.A.) as the book goes on. By the end it's all social with little on the music. Still, a very good read and illuminating in showing how the times influenced the music and visa versa. ( )

This was exactly what I was hoping it to be...touching on racial, gender, social, cultural, historical, political, and economic issues in addition to the development of the music itself. Exhaustive but only scratches the surface. So much of it kept me thinking, "The more things change..." and I can't help but hope for an update for everything that's happened since 2005. ( )

50. Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang
Introduction DJ Kool Herc
reader: Mirron Willis
published: 2005 (2016 on audio)
format: 19:33 Libby audiobook (560 pages in hardcover)
acquired: Library
listened: Aug 20-31, Sep 11-25
rating: 3

The book is dated, but what do I know? Outside the Beastie Boys and the maybe not-quite-Hip-Hop Red Hot Chili Peppers, I kind of missed this whole thing. Chang, currently the executive director the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, at Stanford University, writes an incomplete selective history of Hip-Hip and the cultures it came from. He's both fascinating and frustrating, but more the former than the later.

He presents an elaborate narrative from the Jamaica of Bob Marley, to the Jamaica-immigrant driven street Hip-Hop scene in the black and latino New York inner and suburban neighborhoods, to the take off of Hip-Hop in the mainstream culture and arts. He picks places to focus on, especially Marley, DJ Kool Herc (who wrote the introduction), Grandmaster Flash, graffiti artists like the Fab 5, to Public Enemy, to, when the book finally leaves New York for LA (about 3/4's in), Ice Cube, and NWA, and finally a long take on the magazine The Source. And he ties it all in, mostly, the Jamaican politics, a painfully detailed and confusion history of certain aspects of the New York gangs, police violence against blacks, over and over, and more and more horrifying, to Watts, Compton and the Rodney King Riots. But the book has some narrative issue at this point. Did the LA riots in 1992 really impact Hip-Hop? I couldn't tell from this, because Chang changes course attacking the music industry for it's failure to identify that Hip-Hop was the about the fastest growing music market in the 1990's, and then attacking US policy for allowing Clear Channel to sterilize American radio on a national scale.

That's a lot, and wanders off in way too much detail on a lot of this stuff, which is maybe ok. But there are gaping holes, and, as far as I can tell, he didn't interview anyone. He just quotes news articles and published sources. While reading it I looked up some YouTube videos on the early history of Hip-Hop and found a world of characters and names and voices he barely indicates exists. Most of these people are still around and they want to talk about the era, the technology tricks, the personalities, the crowds and cultural feedback. There is so much rich information, so much not here. It's a major oddball flaw, and one he never expresses. You get his summaries defined as complete. They're not.

Still, a good experience, and I'm glad I listened. I have a lot of music to explore...

2018
https://www.librarything.com/topic/288371#6588631 ( )

One of the best books about music period. ( )

Excellent history of how hip-hop began and where it's been going. Really ties it into the original scene in the Bronx in the 70s. ( )