Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force - ‘Planet Rock’
taken from Planet Rock (Tommy Boy, 1986)

Jeff Chang - Can’t Stop Won’t Stop - A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (St. Martin’s Press, 2005)

Given that Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop was first published in 2005, this review will probably be three years late for an audience that I would expect have probably devoured it twice over already. However, having never read it myself and spent as much time as possible over the Bank Holiday weekend pouring over every word, it feels fitting to hip you in the direction of a piece of literature that goes down as absolutely essential for anybody who is interested in both the musical history of the genre and the social, historical and political contexts that gave birth to it: I’m guessing that’s you.

Chang’s achievement here is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Tracing the roots of the culture back to the turbulent Jamaica of the late ’60s, he proceeds to look in depth at the organisation of gangs and the policy-making that created them in New York City during the ’70s before taking the reader on a whirlwind tour that covers the very first block parties hosted by Kool Herc all the way through to hip hop’s assimilation into the mainstream during the mid-’90s and beyond. Although there are moments that focus very heavily on certain key albums (the first couple of Public Enemy LPs, NWA’s debut and Ice Cube’s Amerikkka’s Most Wanted and Death Certificate receiving pretty much their own chapters), Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is as much a look at the social conditions that defined the aesthetics of the music and the ongoing issues of race and gender that are so intertwined within it and contemporary America in wider terms as it is a chronology of key works that have defined the genre.

This may sound a little heavy, and although in places the writing is relatively dense, there is a broad enough range of content to keep things on the lighter side. Excerpts from interviews with Bambaataa, Jazzy Jay, Kool Herc and other early pioneers go deeper than in any other publication I’ve ever read, and when Chang does focus on the music he does so with an eloquence and intelligence that is wonderfully enlightening and entertaining. There’s also a hefty dose of discussion on graffiti, b-boying and the way in which the four elements came to exist under the same cultural umbrella as well as a look at the development of hip hop journalism and how it documented, analysed and helped to shape the culture: basically, it’s all in here.

To my mind, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is the most comprehensive history of hip hop that exists, a definitive account of the ins and outs of a genre that has gone from neighbourhood pastime to global phenomenon in no less than 30 years. If for whatever reason you haven’t gotten around to reading Chang’s masterpiece yet then I cannot recommend strongly enough that you get yourself a copy immediately: this is basically any self-discerning rap nerd’s wildest wet dream manifested in words and paper. Buy it. Right now.