TORONTO URBAN MUSIC CONFERENCE 2005

Jeff Chang
Can't Stop Won't Stop

By Kerry Doole

Journalist/author Jeff Chang is part academic, part activist, part hip hop fan. This combination coalesces perfectly in his acclaimed new book, Can't Stop Won't Stop. Published by St. Martin's Press, it is subtitled "A History Of The Hip hop Generation," and it provides exactly that, in highly readable form.

It can lay claim to being the best book yet on hip hop, and the social, cultural, economic and political forces that have shaped it. Exhaustive research and original interviews with DJs, rappers, b-boys, gang members, graffiti writers and genre pioneers are at its heart. Can't Stop Won't Stop has won a 2005 American Book Award, and its commercial momentum is building. Jeff Chang will be at the upcoming Toronto Urban Musical Festival on Aug. 31st, as the keynote speaker on Wednesday, August 31 at Hart House at the University of Toronto (downtown campus.)

WORD recently reached Chang in Honolulu. Here is our interview.

Has the response to Can't Stop Won't Stop exceeded your expectations?
"It has blown me away, way beyond anything I could have expected. I did a book tour for nearly four months, and it was amazing. We had events in the Bronx and San Francisco and did one here in Honolulu last weekend. They were like official release parties. In The Bronx, I just wanted to do a quick read, then back off and let the pioneers tell their stories. So we had a panel with DJ Kool Herc, Benjamin Melendez of The Ghetto Brothers, DJ Jazzy Jay , and it was just amazing, an out of body experience."

What sort of feedback have you been getting from the pioneers you wrote about?
"It has been wonderful. Part of what I try to say is that this is just one of a million different ways to tell the story. To the extent I can facilitate or help a lot more of those points of view come into being, that is what I wanted to do. It is just one particular take on the whole hip hop thing. I wasn't there at the beginning, obviously, so I can only put together things I've learned from books. But people like Carlos Suarez of The Ghetto Brothers, is doing his autobiography and so is Afrika Bambaatta, so I can't wait for those to come out."

To me, the positive reaction shows there has been a void in hip hop literature, that this was a book that needed to be written. Do you sense that?
"Partly. To be fair, I drew on a lot of classic works. I'm sort of a student and fan of hip hop writing, from the very beginning. When I was a teenager growing up in Honolulu, the books that came out then were like Steven Hager's Hip-Ho. To me that's a classic, the first piece of hip hop journalism. Without that, we wouldn't know about a lot of this stuff. A lot of the stuff I read in that book is a foundation for my own. And David Toop's The Rap Attack. Those two books when I was a teenager blew me away. And stuff from Nelson George, and a book called And It Don't Stop and Sally Barnes. Some of these were in tabloid format, that is where a lot of the writing starts. I wanted to bring together the social and political context of the culture, and the cultural context of the politics. To me, hip hop isn't just about rap music or even the four or five elements. It is something that has become the voice of our generation, so you want to bring in things like the Bronx, the L. A. riots, events that affected us all. That was the connection I was trying to make. For me it is about being an activist as well as someone who loves the culture, so it was a natural thing for me to flip between the context and content of hip hop."

One thing I especially enjoyed was your stress on the influence of Jamaican music - reggae and dub - on hip hop, as that has been so undervalued.
"Yes, though I felt it had become rather a cliche. Yes, Kool Herc comes from Jamaica, therefore reggae moved right into hip hop. I wanted to show the reasons reggae took the form it did in the '70s, and that these are the same kinds of forces that eventually push hip hop to become a worldwide culture. You find interesting historical parallels. Jamaica in the late '60s was coming out of independence, so you had black pride and black power. There is great optimism in the country and the idea of politics, as with young people in the U.S. and the civil rights and black power movements. What quickly happens is that you get a backlash from the U.S. when Jamaica turned left, and in 72 there is a mass mobilization of all these previously disinterested young people to go to the polls and vote for their champion. Then pressure quickly mounts from the U.S., gang warfare breaks out, and there is a shift from optimism to pessimism in politics there. At the same time, a lot of people were pouring their energies into culture. I think that is exactly what happened with the hip hop generation."

Are you fascinated in the ways hip hop has become so international? I'm actually from New Zealand, and there is a vibrant, indigenous Maori and Polynesian hip hop scene there.
"Yes, I love Scribe from there. Here in Hawaii, there is a strong hip hop scene here too, with native Hawaiians. I see hip hop as an open platform that the most marginalized of people can use as a voice, to let people know where they are coming from and where they'd like to go. That is why it has become such a powerful thing. Think about The Bronx. Here is something that happened in a very tiny neighbourhood, less than seven miles radius. Folks that were supposed to be wiped out, yet here in their neighbourhood, they say OK, this is the way we dance and spin on our head, this is the way we create art, on walls, causes we don't have classes. We want the world to see it. This happens in abandoned neighbourhoods. It is almost poetic that it should find the forgotten and left-behind kids all around the world. I think that is the power of hip hop."

How do you see that spirit of hip hop changing, now that it has been adopted by suburban white youth, and you have a superstar like Eminem?
"It is a double-edged sword. The commercialism of hip hop within the last two decades has made it possible for the culture to spread. If you didn't have the global corporations shipping this stuff overseas and making it the primary engine of pop culture, then you wouldn't necessarily see as much hip hop as you do around the world. You can't argue with that. Plus it has provided jobs for you and me (laughs). At the same time it is clearly not something the community has control over now, the way it did back then. Here is an example. The whole beef between The Game and 50 Cent, which threatened to get out of control. Back then, the community could dial it back and mediation could occur. When The Game and 50 are doing their thing, there are so many people that have investment in the outcome, their livelihood, their mortgages. All depend on these guys selling millions. It is not something that is within their own community anymore. But also within hip hop I think there is a self-correcting mechanism, where the people that love the culture try hard to maintain a certain set of standards and cultural respect. One of the big things I've seen this year, for instance, is an outgrowth of hip hop feminism. There was a huge conference in Chicago, and there is a whole new wave of feminism and female writers, critiques of commercial radio coming out of that. It is a beautiful thing and long overdue."

I've read that one of your favourite writers is Naomi Klein. Is it ironic that her catchphrase is No Logo, yet in hip hop there is so much stress on logos or brand fixation.
"I don't necessarily see that. I think they are two sides of the same coin, that same coin being globalization. What has to happen is a critique to emerge of the ways that corporate globalization has transformed hip hop culture. Out of that comes a realization of the larger engine for change that has affected a lot of people in negative ways. I think people can understand that on a very personal level, like say a rapper who realizes he is only getting paid five cents on the dollar for art that he creates. That pisses him off. They are being pushed into realizing they need to create an independent base of power to negotiate from. That is interesting, as it is not too far from what a lot of the anti-corporate globalization movement is trying to do. Progressives in hip hop need to be able to bridge that critique of corporate culture with a larger critique of how that culture forces you to change your content. Then what happens at the end of the day is that you're not really going to make money off your record. You'll make it off touring and merchandising and diversifying. Why is that? What would it look like if you assumed control over your future? You'll realize that requires getting together with other folks who have a similar problem. Then you'll have the beginnings of a very interesting working towards change. That has been happening on a local level for a long time. We need to bridge our efforts with those of people like Russell Simmons and P. Diddy. Once you've got that going, we've got a way to meet the main challenge of our generation, which is to try to leverage the cultural power we have in a push towards political power."

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