One of Slate's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years
"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
