115 pages • 3 hours read
Jeff ChangCan't Stop Won't Stop (Young Adult Edition): A Hip-Hop History
Nonfiction | Book | YA | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Hip-Hop as a Source of Unity
In the early days in the Bronx in New York City, hip-hop was first and foremost a source of unity for those who were divided by racial segregation and systemic oppression. When a large portion of the Bronx was destroyed, President Jimmy Carter “emerged from a state motorcade at Charlotte Street in the heart of the South Bronx—three helicopters overhead, Secret Service agents at his side—to gaze silently upon four square blocks of dead city” (3) in 1977. What he saw was rubble, emptiness, and a community torn apart. However, neither he nor his government acted to help or protect the people of the Bronx. Unemployment skyrocketed, especially among the youth, and the white families who lived there moved away. What was left were Black and Latinx families struggling to make ends meet. Over one hundred gangs formed during this time, and the neighborhood was torn apart by violence and turf wars. Hip-hop music was what brought them together, and, as hip-hop expanded across the globe, it united countless communities and made friends out of foes.
DJ Kool Herc brought his community together with the block parties he would hold and the new musical style he invented. Others quickly became inspired and began creating their own hip-hop shows and hosting their own parties. Soon, hip-hop crews were uniting the community and inspiring youth to be creative and compete through dance and rhyme rather than violence. The same series of events occurred in Los Angeles in the 1990s, resulting in a peace treaty between the long-feuding Crips and Bloods. Similarly, hip-hop was heavily influenced by apartheid in South Africa, and when Nelson Mandela was elected president:
he invited Prophets of Da City to perform at his first presidential address and his inauguration. The song they sang, “Neva Again,” heralded a new era for young Africa. “Ah, excellent! Finally a Black president to represent!” Shaheen rapped, and by the end of the song, the crew had people doing a new dance in tribute to the leader who had brought them to freedom. (266)
Two decades later, Obama was in the races to be elected president of the United States, and once again hip-hop responded with graffiti art and music encouraging youth to vote. This drive would lead to a historical Black youth voter turnout and Obama elected president.
Hip-hop was always meant to unite the world. It started small in the streets of the Bronx and rose up to become a global culture of freedom, peace, and fun. Most prominently, hip-hop helped move Black people out of the projects and into the spotlight. It gave them a way out, a leg to stand on, and an outlet for their anger. Public Enemy and Run-DMC took hip-hop around the globe, making the world a little bit smaller, and:
by 1981 Bambaataa was in the middle of a very different kind of desegregation, a wholly voluntary one. He was taking the music and culture of the Black and brown Bronx into the white art-crowd and punk-rock clubs of lower Manhattan. The iron doors of segregation that the previous generation had started to unlock were battered down by the pioneers of the hip-hop generation. Soon hip-hop was not merely all-city, it was global—a Planet Rock. (40)
By the end of the 20th century, hip-hop was fully embraced by people of all races, and artists, such as Eminem, bridged the gap even more. Although America still has a long way to go, hip-hop will always be there to serve as a means of uniting enemies.
The Voice of the Youth
Hip-hop evolved out of the Bronx in New York City during a time when youth unemployment and gang involvement was at its peak. After half the neighborhood was destroyed and “sixty thousand Bronx residents were caught directly in the crosshairs of the Expressway” (3), these residents were displaced from their homes and unable to find work. The “official youth unemployment rate hit 60 percent” (4) and as a result youth resorted to joining gangs. DJ Kool Herc saw that his community needed an outlet and a way to come together despite the turf wars and violence, so he started hosting block parties. Herc explains the importance of these parties in settling down the gang culture and breaking barriers: “Kids could have been doing something else, but now people living good, having good jobs, an economy” (297). As hip-hop culture spread, it gave not only youth from the Bronx a culture and a source of unity, but youth all over the world saw it as a means to make themselves heard and understood.
In America, Black people have been oppressed, marginalized, and neglected for as long as they have existed on this continent. When slavery ended, racism and systemic oppression did not; they merely changed form. Black communities developed but were forced into segregation. After official segregation laws were repealed in the 1960s, white people still did not want to live around Black people, and as Black people began moving into white neighborhoods, white people moved out. Black people thus remained segregated, and these communities were and are deeply neglected and abused by the governments that are supposed to ensure their wellbeing. In the 1970s, DJ Kool Herc’s persistence had a pay-off that extends into the present: “stabbed, nearly got killed in a party, but I didn’t give up because the youth was having fun. They said, ‘Herc, when is the next party?’ and that’s what kept me going” (297). It is hip-hop’s ability to keep people going that makes it so powerful. In the face of Reagan economics in the 1980s, Black poverty rose once again, and hip-hop served as a vehicle for youth to speak up about it. Crews like Public Enemy, NWA, and Run-DMC were honest about the problems Black people have to deal with, such as police brutality, racism, and segregation. When the LA riots unfolded after the Rodney King verdict in 1992, hip-hop artists called their communities to unite and put an end to the violence. They urged people to express themselves through words and to turn their energies toward helping their communities thrive. After Trump was elected in 2016, Black American youth again faced concerns over being othered and neglected. Black Lives Matter rose up in the face of Trump and the death of George Floyd, and many hip-hop artists regularly express their support for the movement.
Hip-hop does not just act as a voice for Black youth but for all youth who find themselves without a voice:
As time went on, some fans began to express their own identity, sporting leather medallions with Puerto Rican, Mexican, Filipino, or Irish flags. That was hip-hop’s power at its best. Black freedom culture could give voice to those who needed it, that was why it had the power to transform people and society. (271)
Those who are marginalized in society identify with hip-hop’s bravado, its power, its boldness, its honesty, and its ability to command the attention of the masses.
The Evolution of Hip-Hop Culture
Jeff Chang and David “Davey D” Cook lay out the development of hip-hop into four parts, or loops. These loops in the progression of hip-hop represent what they consider to be pivotal stages along the way, and they are divided based on significant milestones in the music itself, the way it was received by the world, and the political events that influenced and were influenced by hip-hop. The introduction of hip-hop is credited to DJ Kool Herc, who brought his community together for a block party on August 13, 1973, and created a new style of music to keep his crowd dancing. Inspired by the funky sounds and rapping of James Brown, he mixed these new breakbeats with rap to create hip-hop music. Herc’s parties moved from his apartment complex to the streets and parks of his community; “by the summer of 1974, when Herc was playing regular parties to a loyal following, he decided to play a free party on the block” (20). He knew fights might break out as rival gangs showed up to the party, but Herc warned that if that happened, he would pull the plug and end the show. The youth of the Bronx respected DJ Kool Herc and followed his rules. The result was that the barriers and rivalries between gangs in the Bronx began to break down. As the years went on, competitor DJs popped up all over the Bronx and other boroughs in New York, transforming the scene into “one based not on gang turfs, but where the parties were” (25). Meanwhile, Afrika Bambaataa was intentionally inviting rival gangs to his shows and hosting rappers from various crews and gangs. He preached unity and respect. As the 1970s drew to a close, hip-hop grew in popularity. Artists began landing record deals, having their music played in clubs and radio, and eventually airing on MTV with Run-DMC’s “Rock Box” in 1984, changing hip-hop forever.
In the second loop, hip-hop music came out of the Bronx and began cropping up across the country. One place where hip-hop especially took hold was Los Angeles, California, where ghettos and gangs much like those in the Bronx existed as a result of economic oppression and neglect. The West Coast brought its own unique flavor and story to hip-hop. At the same time, hip-hop was airing on MTV and on radio stations across America. It was no longer just a culture of the Bronx; it was slowly becoming a global youth culture. By the third loop in the 1990s, hip-hop was more popular than any other musical genre. It was fully integrated into white radio and TV, featured in countless movies, and seen as a lucrative investment by record companies. When Rodney King was brutalized by police in 1991, hip-hop gave Black people a means of expressing the anger and rage they felt. The East and West Coast developed a bitter rivalry that resulted in the deaths of two of hip-hop’s greatest rappers, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.
By the turn of the 20th century, hip-hop was a fully established global culture and the most profitable consumer market for youth in America. Hip-hop found popularity from Japan to England and Germany, to Brazil and South Africa. It started out as a youth culture in the Bronx, consisting of DJs, MCs, b-boys and b-girls, and graffiti artists. These youth had lost their voice and their position in society, and hip-hop helped them gain it back. Today, hip-hop still acts as a tool for the oppressed. When Black Lives Matter rose in prominence after the death of George Floyd, hip-hop artists “like Anderson .Paak, Rebel Diaz, YG, and Public Enemy released powerful music speaking to what were now called the Uprisings” (295). Looking to the future, hip-hop music will continue to evolve, take on new forms, and inspire new subgenres, developing right alongside freedom from oppression.
