Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

The birth of hip-hop out of the ruin of the South Bronx is a story that has been told many times, but never with the cinematic scope and the analytic force that Jeff Chang brings to it. . . . This is one of the most urgent and passionate histories of popular music ever written. --The New Yorker

This is a book that should be on the shelves of every high school and college library, an engaging and entertaining full-blown excursion into American inner-city culture's rapid proliferation into every nook and cranny of culture at large. --Los Angeles Weekly

Chang tells these stories beautifully . . . provocative. --The New York Times Book Review

When Hip-Hop 101 becomes a requirement, Jeff Chang's history of the turmoil that begat this beloved culture will be the go-to textbook. --Vibe magazine

The most important new genre of the last quarter century finally has a sweeping historical overview as powerful as the music with Can't Stop Won't Stop . . . the best-argued, most thoroughly researched case for hip-hop as a complete and truly American culture. --Chicago Sun-Times

Jeff Chang's new and necessary book . . . delivers a vivid account of the last third of the American twentieth century. . . . The book is as much a cultural history as a music history. --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

His scope is operatic, sprawling, and concerns itself with the people, places, and politics that drove hip-hop from its infancy. . . . It is essentially a people's history . . . perhaps Jeff Chang is hip-hop America's Howard Zinn. --Salon.com
Flow without the ego, intellectualism without Ivory Tower disdain, and, finally, history with heart and passion and fire: Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop manages to go from wide-lens overview to pinpoint accuracy in covering the biggest cultural-political movement of our time. A true accomplishment. --Farai Chideya, author of Trust and The Color of Our Future

Jeff Chang is a master alchemist, spinning narrative gold from a weave of sociology, history, political theory, and old fashioned boom-bap. . .Can't Stop Won't Stop is one of the best books yet written on the shifting, tumultuous history of hip-hop culture and the generation of adherents it spat onto the American and global landscape. It is a tour-de-force. --Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, author of Gunshots In My Cook-Up: Bits of Hip-Hop Caribbean Life

An exuberant and revelatory history of the inner-city cultural revolution that still rocks the world. Jeff Chang is hip-hop's John Reed. --Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums

One of our most insightful commentators on urban music takes a panoramic survey of hip-hop's entirety. . .Authoritative, incisive, and entertaining, Can't Stop Won't Stop is a massive achievement. --Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84 and Generation Ecstasy

Don't be misled; this is not just another rap book. . .inflammatory, illuminating, and anything but myopic, the scope of Chang's work is awe-inspiring. --DJ Shadow, hip-hop artist, Endtroducing and The Private Press

This book belongs on your shelf next to Criminal Minded, Illmatic and All Eyez On Me. --William Jelani Cobb, PhD, author of To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic

Orale pues-Can't Stop Won't Stop draws from the fire, verve, rage, injustices, pains, victories, and creativity of a whole generation of marginalized, forgotten, pissed-on and pissed-off youth. --Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA and Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times

Jeff Chang backspins the un-interrogated truisms that plague so much hip hop scholarship. . .Can't Stop Won't Stop is a fluid, incisive analysis built from the ground up, with plenty of funky breakdowns. --Adam Mansbach, author of Angry White Boy and Shackling Water

Has any scholar ever loved hip hop so well--and taken it as seriously--as Jeff Chang does in Can't Stop Won't Stop? --Bill Adler, author of Tougher Than Leather

From the intellectual roots of Black cultural and political movements to the emergence of hip-hop activism, Can't Stop Won't Stop is the most comprehensive book out on hip-hop. --Henry Chalfant, co-producer Style Wars, co-author of Subway Art and Spraycan Art

Can't Stop Won't Stop brings us so much closer to fully understanding the complexities that inspired the Hip-Hop Generation. --Mark Anthony Neal, author of Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation

Jeff Chang has created a new rhythm in hip-hop writing. A must-read and an instant classic. --B+ (Brian Cross), photographer, producer/director of Keepintime, and author of It's Not About A Salary

Jeff Chang has been a hip-hop journalist for more than a decade and has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Village Voice, Vibe, The Nation, URB, Rap Pages, Spin, and Mother Jones. He was a founding editor of Colorlines Magazine, senior editor at Russell Simmons's 360hiphop.com, and cofounder of the influential hip-hip label SoleSides, now Quannum Projects. He lives in California.