Can't Stop Won't Stop

“Hip-hop culture was the authentic cultural expression of young people of color in America at a time when they saw fairly bleak prospects for themselves.” Read more...

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Doug Rossinow, Historian

“This is not the biography of a single activist. It is a kind of sociopolitical history of hip-hop. It goes back a long way. Chang spends a lot of time describing the rise of gangs from the late 1960s. He tells you a lot about 1970s New York. Hip-hop really started as an artform long before most people outside the Bronx were aware of it…The sections that I kept going back to again and again were the ones about Public Enemy and N.W.A and Ice Cube, and Chang goes through the various controversies they faced step by step. Political hip-hop was very controversial and widely discussed. And again you see the impact that taking a political stand can have on the individuals when they realise that they don’t agree with some of the members of their own bands, or their ideas are changing so quickly they become at odds with some of their fans. The author is a fan but not an undemanding one. He really digs deep into the complexity of it. There are lots of good books about hip-hop, but this is definitely the best one on the politics and social context of hip-hop.” Read more...

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Dorian Lynskey, Musicians, Music Critics & Scholar