Wow! eBook
And It Don't Stop
Author(s): Raquel Cepeda (Author)
- Publisher: Faber & Faber
- Publication Date: 29 Sept. 2004
- Language: English
- Print length: 384 pages
- ISBN-10: 9780571211593
- ISBN-13: 9780571211593
Book Description
In September 1979, there was a cosmic shift that went unnoticed by the majority of mainstream America. This shift was triggered by the release of the Sugarhill Gang's single, Rapper's Delight. Not only did it usher rap music into the mainstream's consciousness, it brought us the word "hip-hop." And It Don't Stop, edited by the award winning journalist Raquel Cepeda, with a foreword from Nelson George is a collection of the best articles the hip-hop generation has produced. It captures the indelible moments in hip-hop's history since 1979 and will be the centerpiece of the twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration.
This book epitomizes the media's response by taking the reader on an engaging and critical journey, including the very first pieces written about hip-hop for publications like The Village Voice--controversial articles that created rifts between church and state, the artist and journalist, and articles that recorded the rise and tragic fall of the art form's appointed heroes, such as Tupac Shakur, Eazy-E, and the Notorious B.I.G. The list of contributors includes Toure, Kevin Powell, dream hampton, Harry Allen, Cheo Hodari Coker, Greg Tate, Bill Adler, Hilton Als, Danyel Smith, and Joan Morgan.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Hip Hop is the voice of the communtity and its child, Hip Hop journalism, adds a new element to the mix in another medium that goes way beyond the music industry to become a true organ of news. And It Don't Stop is essential reading. It captures the extraordinary eruptions of word, image and sound that Hip Hop inspired and, in itself, continues the process of self-definition and community empowerment that has characterized the movement from the earliest days to the present. Raquel Cepeda knew how to pick them. The articles she has chosen are a distillation of the significant events, personalities, conflicts and philosophies that together shape the revolutionary impact of Hip Hop on the world." --Henry Chalfant, co-author of Spray Can Art
"An irresistible compilation of the most stylish prose and revelatory interviews of the last twenty-five years on Hip Hop, And It Don't Stop is required reading for any serious devotee of contemporary urban culture. Raquel Cepeda places Hip Hop journalism in a historical framework: we not only discover how writing styles have changed over the years, but we also learn how the stakes in writing about Hip Hop have transformed alongside the music and culture. It's a glorious reminder of how influential journalists have been, and continue to be, in helping to shape and create this thing we call Hip Hop." --Jason King, Associate Chair, The Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, New York University
"And It Don't Stop is long overdue. Boom! Like powerful shots from the cannon. Rock shocking, in the place to be! The writers in this collection, like Kierna Mayo, dream hampton, Raquel Cepeda, Bill Adler, and Sacha Jenkins are some of the most brilliant writers--hip hop or not--of the last twenty-five years. I welcome this book." --Bobbito Garcia, DJ, basketball performer, author of Where D'You Get Those? New York City's Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987
"Raquel Cepeda has finally done justice to the mother-wit, social power, and visceral passion of hip-hop journalism. Here's an indispensable collection of pioneering, bold, visionary and cautionary writing, a must-have for anyone who loves this culture." --Jeff Chang, author Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
"At their best, popular culture journalists give us an insightful, ground-level, up-close view. That's what we've got here. This is some of the best journalism on hip hop over the past 25 years--a valuable collection for hip hop students, fans and nostalgic observers alike." --Tricia Rose, author of Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America
"Once in a while a book comes along that commands attention. And It Don't Stop is hip hop defined by its generations' best writers and observers, an absolute must have--definite satisfaction" --Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, The Roots
"And It Don't Stop features snapshots of some of hip hop's finest moments by the generation's greatest thinkers. Raquel Cepeda did an excellent job at framing it like it was and is. This is a must-have for those who have defined as well as those who are curious about the culture." --Russell Simmons, producer, activist, founder of Def Jam Records
"Whatever one's feelings about 'hip hop nation, ' it certainly has given rise to vibrant journalism. Thanks to Raquel Cepeda for collecting it in this important new book." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr
About the Author
Raquel Cepeda, former Editor-in-Chief of OneWorld Magazine, is an award-winning journalist. She has contributed to MTV News, The Village Voice, Source, Vibe, Essence, Jalouse, and many other publications. She lives in New York City.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1980s:Looking for the Perfect BeatIn the 1970s, hip-hop culture arose in and out of the Bronx--where Kurtis Blow claimed the people were fresh, by way of its innovative B-boys, rappers, DJs, and graffiti maestros cultivating their art. Its proud adoptive father Afrika Bambaataa eventually christened the culture hip-hop, a term that first appeared in print in an article written by Steven Hager, "Afrika Bambaataa's Hip-Hop," etching Bambaataa's place in the testament of the movement.By the time the multiplatinum classic record "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang proved commercially viable in 1979, a rainbow coalition of journalists, photographers, filmmakers, producers, fashionistas, and promoters was conspiring in documenting and defining the art form. When the general public got a whiff of just how funky the B-boy (and B-girl) was, he became the media darling and an essential prop to any fresh party. The graffiti documentaryStyle Wars, and films like Wild Style, the Hollywood co-opted Flashdance, Beat Street, Breakin', Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, and later, the Russell Simmons--producedkrush Groove, propelled break-dancers, graffiti artists, and rappers to celebrity status not just in the States, but all over the world.Their global popularity soon led to a demand for a showcasing of the culture on foreign ground, which was met when the first international "rap tour," plucking a group of talented young blacks and Latinos from the streets of New York City, journeyed to Europe's hot spots. Attempting to re-create in writing the booming club scene abroad, writer and editor David Hershkovits accompanied the tour only to end up documenting the cultural divide that gaped between the entertainers and their global audience, and at the same time the universality of the music and the dancer, in his article "London Rocks, Paris Burns, and the B-Boys Break a Leg," for the now defunctSunday News Magazine insert for the New York Daily News.Hershkovits, a fixture in the psychedelic melting pot of the downtown New York scene in the 1980s where the art world and B-boys would collide harmoniously on the dance floor, was also an editor who encouraged other writers, like Steven Hager, to pursue their curiosity about the burgeoning hip-hop scene. Along with Hager, Bill Adler, dance critic Sally Banes, Nelson George, and other early journalistic pioneers, Hershkovits made the first attempts to truly define what hip-hop culture was and its potential as an international force with which to be reckoned. What particularly defined this nascent hip-hop culture in the 1980s was the club and party scene. One of the most popular attractions in the Bronx, other than the zoo, was Sal Abbatiello's Disco Fever. Some fifteen subway stops north of Studio 54, Disco Fever, as Bill Adler wrote in 1983 in his article "The South Bronx Was Getting a Bad Rap Until a Club Called Disco Fever Came Along," had "emerged as the headquarters of rap music." So important were the DJs at the Fever that if they didn't spin your record, felt Russell Simmons, your joint was just wack. And who would know better than Simmons, who was already being touted a mogul byThe Wall Street Journal at twenty-seven, as reported by Nelson George in his article "Rappin' with Russell."Simmons would eventually be responsible for making rap music equal big business, and the bigger the business the more dire the need for competent and accurate coverage. This need for coverage soon cemented an unprecedented closeness between the artists and those who wrote about them. Hip-hop personalities weren't as accessible or on the World Wide Web, and the genre wasn't synonymous with pop culture at this time, so journalists covering this insular scene had to parlay in the cut with the artists they wanted to write about.Signaling the possibilities of this new relationship between hip-hop artists, their handlers, and the writers who covered them, Bill Adler went from writing about the art form and participants like Russell Simmons to becoming someone to be covered himself. Nelson George was soon writing about his journalistic peer, and his lifelong contribution to hip-hop, as Adler morphed from hip-hop writer to director of publicity for Rush Artist Management and Def Jam Recordings in 1984, becoming Simmons's second full-time employee. Adleralso has the distinction of being the only writer of this period to still be almost exclusively immersed in hip-hop culture, penning an authorized Run-D.M.C. biography, and founding a New York City--based gallery devoted to showcasing hip-hop photography.By the mid-eighties, rap was becoming bigger business, giving those who wrote about it much more to do. Graffiti art and breaking gave way to rapping with the crossover success of artists like Run-D.M.C., whose collaboration with Aerosmith on "Walk This Way" in 1986 marked rap's arrival on Music Television, better known as MTV, exposed rap to an audience of rock enthusiasts, and led to the debut ofYO! MTV Raps in 1988. L.L. Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Slick Rick, EPMD, and 3rd Bass then muscled aside the pioneers with their mainstream appeal and corporate sponsorship.By the mid-eighties seminal groups like KRS-One's Boogie Down Productions and the controversial Public Enemy, like no other collectives before (or since), also began using rap music not only as a method to entertain, but to educate the masses--"edutainment," as described by KRS-One, ironically paving the way for both the innate anger in the rap expression of South Central, Los Angeles, and the pan-Afrocentric Native Tongues Movement. Public Enemy's Chuck D became a media obsession because of his brutally honest depictions of life in the inner cities at the mercy of policemen and other social ills, and the contradictions that plagued his group. John Leland, who began writing about hip-hop in 1982, had a special relationship, if you will, with Chuck D. Giving us a hint about what would become a running theme of tension between artists and the writers who critiqued their music, Leland managed to tick Chuck D off with a record review he had penned forThe Village Voice, which resulted in threats. The article featured in this section represented the first time the two had met since the one-sided war of words had begun.While the dance and graffiti art of hip-hop became less popular as the hybrid sound of A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, Black Sheep, Brand Nubian, Queen Latifah, and others was embraced, rap music's colorful, sometimes erratic creators were by the late eighties proving to be the stuff great stories were made of, both in print and in the films of young directors likeSpike Lee, and later John Singleton and Albert and Allen Hughes. By the end of the decade, journalists, and those aspiring to be, had found the perfect beat to coverin hip-hop.However, there would not have been a platform to set it off had it not been for the trailblazing efforts of the journalists with the vision, who announced to the world that this wild child had been born. And because of their efforts, featured in the following pages, everybody knew its name was hip-hop.Physical GraffitiBreaking Is Hard to DoSALLY BANES Chico and Tee and their friends from 175th Street in the High Times crew were breaking in the subway and the cops busted them for fighting."We're not fighting. We're dancing!" they claimed. At the precinct station, one kid demonstrated certain moves: a head spin, ass spin,...
