Quoted: Jeff Chang on Hip-Hop
by Latoya Peterson
What you hold in your hands in not another book about rap music. This is about hip-hop.
To most people, hip-hop signifies rap. And perhaps well it should, for since the art of party-rocking was transferred in the form of 1979’s “Rapper’s Delight” to a twelve-inch piece of black polyvinyl chloride, born literally of salt and oil, then distilled further from fifteen minutes of rhymes to a three-minute pop song - in other words, a portable commodity that could leverage hundreds more valuable commodities, the salt and oil of the new global entertainment - hip-hop has been an inescapable fact.
But rap’s pop dominance has eclipsed hip-hop’s true importance. In particular, it has hidden the way that hip-hop has become one of the most far reaching and transformative arts movements of the past two decades. From condemned farmland barns in South Carolina to flashy post-modern boutiques in Shibuya, from brick-and-stone alleyways to the bright lights of Broadway, in airy suburban bedrooms crowded with the stuff of urban detritus and overheated inner-city schoolrooms set abuzz with the noise of personal journals, in front of white laptops, in black-box theatres and red-light districts, hip-hop has set the imagination of a generation afire. I don’t say this to make a “look how we’ve grown up” bid for acceptance, an “it’s more respectable than you think” apology, or even a “you better recognize” boast puffed full of triumphalism.
Again, it’s just simple fact.
—Introduction, Hip-Hop Arts: Our Expanding Universe, from Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
dnA wrote:
Hip-hop is the dominant artistic movement of our generation, hands down. Hate if you wanna.
Posted 06 May 2008 at 10:28 am ¶
flabbyabby wrote:
Whine,whine,whine doesn’t this guy have anything BETTER to yack about?!! I don’t hear constant bitching like little bitches about Country or Alternative or Heavy Metal or tv shows or reality tv or the never-ending stream of CRAP coming from Hollyweird who cares?!!
Mod Note: FlabbyAbby, you need to check our comments policy before you start spouting off. One more post like this and you will be banned.
Posted 06 May 2008 at 6:57 pm ¶
heyhey wrote:
This from a new book? I read “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” last year and I was really impressed how Chang drew a clear through-line from Jamaica to current hip-hop as, at its best, a clarion call for social change. A good read, particularly @ this point, when hiphop-pop (at its worst) is unforunately the disco of the 21st century– *just* club music.
Posted 06 May 2008 at 9:32 pm ¶
Jay Smooth wrote:
Jeff’s book is great but i do not agree that hip-hop music needs to be a clarion call for social change in order to be at its best, any more than jazz or classical or polka does.. hip-hop music is valuable because it is great music, and to suggest it needs something more than its musical value to validate it, even though usually meant as a compliment, is a fundamental error IMO.
Posted 07 May 2008 at 3:05 pm ¶
Sewere wrote:
Man I missed this amidst all the election and interracial posts.
I agree with Jay on this,although I appreciate Jeff’s ability to put hip-hop history in a smooth flow, I don’t believe hip-hop is (one) of the messiahs of social justice neither should it be. Hip-hop is many things to many people, it is great music and bad music, it’s about the empowerment of disenfranchised people and it’s about partying and having fun. Like any form of music, it represents humanity at it’s very best and it’s most fallible.
Posted 07 May 2008 at 10:16 pm ¶
Cara wrote:
i read ‘can’t stop, wont stop,’ and this book ‘total caos’…they were both good. this book is more of a collection of articles by other hip hop gernalist, etc. i like the stacyanne chin selection.
Posted 07 May 2008 at 11:21 pm ¶