Thursday, May 28th, 2009

CSWS V. 2.0 Launches!

After 5 years, we’ve finally overhauled the entire website.

CSWS Version 1.0 was a great way to introduce you to the book and we think Version 2.0 will serve as a better hub of information and discussion around the ideas the book has inspired.

We’ve kept the newspaper type of look to the website, but thanks to the hard work of Eugene Kuo of 226 Design and Shinji Kuwayama of Kuwayama Design, we’ve eliminated the dead spots and tried to make every spot on the pages informative and interesting.

You’ll also find lots of little and big new features.

We’re especially happy to be able to present The Reader, an archive of Jeff’s writings on politics, culture, and the hip-hop movement from the past two decades or so. Over time, this will become the online source to find Jeff’s award-winning work.

Take your time to explore the site. Tell us here what you think we’re missing, what you want to see more of, and just what you think.

Thanks as always for stopping by.

posted by @ 12:46 pm | 0 Comments

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

News From Nowhere :: MIA’s Kala and “Paper Planes”

mia

Before “Pineapple Express”, “Swagga Like Us”, “Slumdog Millionaire”, and a baby made her a global hip-hop heroine, there were a pair of albums. Times have changed. Junot Diaz won a Pulitzer, Obama was elected and the Tamil Tigers were routed. But here’s why M.I.A. mattered then…and still does now.

When she debuted in 2005 with Arular, critics couldn’t get over the package: the brown doe eyes, the cover model looks, the bracingly danceable music–not to mention the lyrics about war, terror and poverty. (more…)

posted by @ 12:37 pm | 0 Comments

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

It’s Obama Time :: The Vibe Cover Story

obamatime001obamatime002

Can the freshman senator from Illinois stick to his ideals and still become the first man to rock Air Force Ones on Air Force One? We’re entering the mostly hotly contested election of our lifetime. It’s time to decide? Is Barack Obama our man?

On a Tuesday afternoon in May, the lines for a Barack Obama rally are as long as they would be for the rock concerts that are the normal fare here at the Electric Factory, a vast, converted warehouse in North Philadelphia. (more…)

posted by @ 1:03 pm | 0 Comments

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

The World’s Best Dance Crew :: How Korean B-Boys Conquered Planet Rock


Rivers Crew in the flow. Photo by the incomparable magnificent Joe Conzo.

How did South Korea come to rule the b-boy world? What role did Asian Americans play? When I visited the 2008 R16 competition in Suwon, heads dropped a history of breaking and hip-hop in South Korea and Korean America on me…

This summer, the United States is reaching new heights of dance fever as TV shows like Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance” and MTV’s “Randy Jackson Presents: America’s Best Dance Crew” have returned to the airwaves.

MTV’s runaway hit is considered especially cutting edge, showcasing hip-hop dance groups from across America. But if MTV really wants the best dance crew, it should be looking in South Korea. (more…)

posted by @ 7:52 pm | 0 Comments

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Funky Intellect :: Bakari Kitwana and The Hip-Hop Intellectuals

bakari

In 2002, then 33-year-old Bakari Kitwana ushered in a new era of hip-hop intellectual work with his book, The Hip-Hop Generation. Since that time, hip-hop studies has quickly expanded in the academy. Here’s a snapshot from that new dawn.

Without dogma or jargon, Bakari Kitwana’s important new book, The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture, cuts right to the chase. “What will be our generation’s contribution to the centuries-long African American struggle for liberation, and how do we redefine this struggle for our time?” he asks.

For us freedom-thinking young’n’s, Kitwana’s emergence as a young Black public intellectual is itself as important as the questions that he poses. (more…)

posted by @ 9:06 pm | 0 Comments

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Chapter 4: Making A Name [Book Excerpt]

How DJ Kool Herc Lost His Accent And Started Hip-Hop

…the logic is an extension rather than a negation. Alias, a.k.a.; the names describe a process of loops. From A to B and back again.
—Paul D. Miller


It has become myth, a creation myth, this West Bronx party at the end of the summer in 1973. Not for its guests–a hundred kids and kin from around the way, nor for the setting–a modest recreation room in a new apartment complex; not even for its location–two miles north of Yankee Stadium, near where the Cross-Bronx Expressway spills into Manhattan. Time remembers it for the night DJ Kool Herc made his name. (more…)

posted by @ 2:33 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

A Poorly Annotated List Of Jeff’s Interviews

Here’s a list of interviews Jeff has done on Can’t Stop Won’t Stop and other stuff. They are roughly in reverse chronological order since 2005.

You may use the search function on the site and blog as well if you’re looking for specific search topics. For whatever it’s worth, this guy has a lot of opinions on a lot of things.

Please let us know of any missing interviews that need to be added or dead links to drop or fix. We web gnomes will do our best to keep it fresh given the crappy salaries Jeff is paying us and our bad morale. (more…)

posted by @ 9:56 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

A Can’t Stop Won’t Stop Q+A with Oliver Wang

In 2004, Oliver Wang sat down to talk with Jeff Chang on Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. Here’s what it sounded like…

Note: for a complete bio of Jeff, click to the Self page.

Q: Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is subtitled “A History of the Hip-Hop Generation”, which seems to me to be rather distinct from calling it “A History of Hip-Hop”. Is there a distinction between the two? (more…)

posted by @ 2:21 pm | 0 Comments

Monday, March 30th, 2009

It’s A New Day :: Notes From November 4


Loric Frye. Photo By Paradise Gray (c) 2008

On election day 2000, a new generation battled a legacy of voting irregularities and cynicism to make itself known. Here is the story of one of those young voters, Loric Frye.

Throughout the north side of Pittsburgh, one of the city’s three major Black districts, they lined up before dawn, hundreds deep in the 47-degree weather as if they were waiting for history to be made. Even after the polling places opened into an instant crawl, they kept coming.

And they kept coming all day. (more…)

posted by @ 7:17 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Coming Soon!

Cantstopwontstop.com V 2.0.
…

posted by @ 8:10 am | 1 Comment



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