rhapsode

by Sha Frasier.the Continuing Education Project.New York.

Source

Chang — Can't Stop Won't Stop

Cited in 4 notes
Charnas — The Big Payback, Hip hop, Matos — The Underground Is Massive, Rose — Black Noise

Find it in a library:WorldCat·Open Library

Author: Jeff Chang
Title: Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
Year: 2005
Type: Book (St. Martin’s Press/Picador)

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation is a book by the journalist Jeff Chang, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2005 with an introduction by DJ Kool Herc. It presents hip hop as the culture of a generation, which Chang describes as marked by “the turn from politics to culture” and his publisher describes as multiracial and polycultural, formed in a period of deindustrialization and globalization after the civil rights era. It tells the history in four parts covering 1968 to 2001, from the decline of the Bronx and the roots generation of Jamaica to the globalization of the century’s end, and it draws on Chang’s interviews with DJs, b-boys, rappers, graffiti writers, activists and gang members. It won an American Book Award, Slate listed it among the fifty best nonfiction books of the previous twenty-five years, and The New Yorker called it one of the most urgent histories of popular music. Alex Abramovich, in the New York Times, argued that its emphasis on politics cost it focus, Ben Thompson, in The Independent, found too few pages on the Notorious B.I.G., Missy Elliott and Eminem, and KRS-One disputed its account of the Stop the Violence movement.

Chang, a journalist, published the book with St. Martin’s Press in New York in 2005, with an introduction by Kool Herc.1, 2 Chang’s prelude opens with the sentence “Generations are fictions,” and calls the book a nonfiction history of that fiction. He writes there that the idea of the hip-hop generation describes “the turn from politics to culture.”3 Bakari Kitwana, in Chang’s words, had “forged a narrow definition” of that generation as African Americans born between 1965 and 1984, and Chang’s idea of it “brings together time and race, place and polyculturalism.”3 His publisher describes the generation as multiracial and polycultural, formed in a post-civil-rights period of deindustrialization and globalization.4

The book is divided into four parts, which it calls Loops, running from “Babylon Is Burning,” which covers 1968 to 1977, to “Stakes Is High,” which covers 1992 to 2001.1 The first chapters cover the decline of the Bronx, “Jamaica’s roots generation and the cultural turn” and the gangs of the Bronx, and a chapter tells how Kool Herc “lost his accent and started hip-hop.”5 The last chapter, “New World Order,” covers globalization, containment and counterculture at the end of the century.5 The book draws on Chang’s own interviews with DJs, b-boys, rappers, graffiti writers, activists and gang members, and it includes portraits of Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D and Ice Cube.4

The book won an American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award, and Slate’s 2019 list of the fifty best nonfiction books of the previous twenty-five years called it “a sweeping cultural history of the dominant American art form of the past 50 years.”2 The New Yorker called it “one of the most urgent and passionate histories of popular music ever written.”4 Alex Abramovich’s review in the New York Times on September 4, 2005, argued that its emphasis on politics over music cost it form and focus in places. Ben Thompson’s review in The Independent found too many pages on the internal politics of The Source magazine and too few on the Notorious B.I.G., Missy Elliott and Eminem.6 KRS-One criticized Herc’s introduction in 2007 and disputed the book’s account of the Stop the Violence movement.7

Key contributions

  • Hip hop read as the culture of the post-civil-rights generation, defined by its turn from politics to culture.
  • A definition of the hip-hop generation by shared culture across races, broader than Bakari Kitwana’s definition by race and birth year.
  • A history that begins with the decline of the South Bronx before the music, based on interviews with DJs, dancers, rappers, graffiti writers, activists and gang members.

See also

  • Black Noise — Tricia Rose’s 1994 study of rap music and Black culture
  • The Big Payback — Dan Charnas’s 2010 history of the hip-hop business

Footnotes

  1. The University of Wisconsin library’s record for the 2005 edition (accessed October 21, 2026), which lists the four Loops with their dates; Herc’s introduction is reprinted at Grantmakers in the Arts (accessed July 13, 2026). ↩ ↩2

  2. The two awards per Jeff Chang, Wikipedia; the listing per Slate’s “The 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years,” November 2019 (both accessed July 13, 2026). ↩ ↩2

  3. The prelude, as excerpted on the book’s ZVAB listing (accessed October 21, 2026); the quoted phrases verbatim. ↩ ↩2

  4. Macmillan’s page for the book (accessed October 21, 2026), which carries the publisher’s description and the New Yorker’s review; verbatim. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. The chapter titles per the Open Library record for the 2005 St. Martin’s Press edition (accessed October 21, 2026); verbatim. ↩ ↩2

  6. Both reviews as summarized on the book’s Wikipedia page (accessed October 21, 2026); Abramovich’s review ran as “‘Can’t Stop Won’t Stop’: A Nation of Millions.” ↩

  7. KRS-One’s objections per the book’s Wikipedia page (accessed July 13, 2026). ↩

Published July 13, 2026