xiii, 546 pages : 24 cm

Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-civil rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview, and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight, and style. Based on original interviews with DJs, b-boys, rappers, graffiti writers, activists, and gang members, with unforgettable portraits of many of hip-hop's forebears, founders, and mavericks, including DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D, and Ice Cube, Can't Stop Won't Stop chronicles the events, the ideas, the music, and the art that marked the hip-hop generation's rise from the ashes of the 60s into the new millennium. Here is a powerful cultural and social history of the end of the American century, and a provocative look into the new world that the hip-hop generation created

Includes bibliographical references, discography, filmography, and index

Introduction / by DJ Kool Herc -- Prelude -- Loop 1: Babylon is burning 1968-1977 -- Necropolis : the Bronx and the politics of abandonment -- Sipple out deh : Jamaica's roots generation and the cultural turn -- Blood and fire, with occasional music : the gangs of the Bronx -- Making a name : how DJ Kool Herc lost his accent and started hip-hop -- Loop 2: Planet Rock 1975-1986 -- Soul salvation : the mystery and faith of Afrika Bambaataa -- Furious styles : the evolution of style in the seven-mile world -- The world is ours : the survival and transformation of Bronx style -- Zulus on a time bomb : hip-hop meets the rockers downtown -- 1982 : rapture in Reagan's America -- End of innocence : the fall of the old school -- Loop 3: The message 1985-1992 -- Things fall apart : the rise of the post-civil rights era -- What we got to say : black suburbia, segregation and utopia in the late 1980s -- Follow for now : the question of post-civil rights black leadership -- The culture assassins : geography, generation and gangsta rap -- The real enemy : the cultural riot of Ice Cube's Death certificate -- Loop 4: Stakes is high 1992-2001 -- Gonna work it out : peace and rebellion in Los Angeles -- All in the same gang : the war on youth and the quest for unity -- Becoming the hip-hop generation : The source, the industry, and the big crossover -- New world order : globalization, containment and counterculture at the end of the century

An American Book Award winner, 2005

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