By APA Staff

The author of Can't Stop Won't Stop, a cultural history of the hip-hop generation, and a giant in the world of arts criticism, Jeff Chang gets candid about the future of Asian American programming, his so-called career, and what it means to step into the cipher.

I first met Jeff Chang as an undergrad at UC Berkeley -- I was a year too young to have crossed paths with him at the school where he had finished his term as student body president the year before (an office later filled by other such illustrious leaders as "Chunk" from The Goonies). At the time, Jeff -- as writer/journalist -- was one of the Asian Americans of any prominence I knew of in hip-hop (well, him and 2 Live Crew's Fresh Kid Ice, aka "The Chinaman") and he was a natural choice to interview when writing a paper on race and hip-hop.

Several years later, I would contact Jeff again when I was contemplating graduate school -- he was slated to begin his PhD studies in sociology at Berkeley. Yet the very morning we met to talk about my own academic aspirations, he informed me he had just withdrawn from school in order to run a fledging independent hip-hop label known as Solesides (now Quannum). Several years after that, I watched as Jeff returned to writing, first as an editor, reviewer and essayist, then as he began to stack the building blocks of what would eventually become his groundbreaking book on hip-hop history, Can't Stop, Won't Stop.

Throughout these years, Jeff became simultaneously a close friend, a mentor and big brother but most of all, he was -- and still is -- a role model of the most powerful kind. By that I mean Jeff has undoubtedly inspired many generations of Asian Americans to explore and engage hip-hop more deeply, not just because of his public accomplishments but simply through his very presence. At a time in the 1990s when there were very few Asian Americans visible in hip-hop's public sphere, Jeff's mere existence -- even as a little more than a byline -- was enough to suggest, "Hey, this is possible for us too." (He was hardly alone in this however -- there was also Joseph "Jazzbo" Patel, Jefferson "Chairman" Mao, and  other prominent APIs on both coasts).

I've seen a similar phenomenon happen within the DJ world, where Q-Bert's rise to stardom as a Filipino American was enough to inspire hundreds of other DJs of Asian descent to step to the turntables themselves. In the case of Jeff and these other API writers, their careers encouraged countless others to write and think about hip-hop in public venues where we may not otherwise have thought we could tread.

The greatest testament to their impact is the fact that today, an Asian American writing on hip-hop is hardly cause for notice: the trails have been blazed, the doors knocked open, the involvement of APIs as writers and editors is now taken for granted as part of hip-hop's larger ethnic mosaic. That is part of the legacy that Jeff has left behind and I don't doubt, as his career continues to flourish, it will far be his last.

-- Oliver Wang, Soul Controller of the Universe

Click here to view the interview in Windows Media Player.

Interview with Jeff Chang

Interviewed by Chi Tung and Brian Hu

Transcribed by Chi Tung

Jeff Chang/Oliver Wang Video edit by Oliver Chien

APA: Could you start by briefly introducing yourself?

Jeff Chang: I'm Jeff Chang, and I'm a writer, and I recently put out a book called Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, and have been doing a lot of writing on hip-hop and music and politics for a good 14, 15 years now.

APA: You're also editing an anthology on the future aesthetics of hip-hop. How is your approach different this time around?

JC: The anthology is not meant to be something that's primarily written by me. Can't Sop Won't Stop is sort of a social, cultural history of the hip-hop generation. It's something that covers the last 20, 30 years as seen through the eyes of the hip-hop geneneration. So there's a lot of flipping back and forth, between the context and content of the culture all the way through the book. When I finished it, one of the things that was happening alongside was a lot of discussions in art circles about hip-hop, not in terms of rap music, but in terms of hip-hop in theater, in literature, in spoken word, in visual arts, and I got to be part of these discussions, by virtue of the fact that I was doing writings on these discussions. There was a lot of discussion about what it meant to be talking about hip-hop in these different fields. Talking to a lot of folks, we came up with this idea for doing this book called Total Chaos, about the aesthetics of hip-hop. Two main differences here: one is that hip-hop is an arts movement that's one of the most influential in recent years, the other part is to center the artists in that discussion, because a lot of the times what happens is it's centered around critics or the audience over the artist. So I thought it was really important to center their voices in the discussion, and how they see practicing hip-hop in dance, theatre, visual arts, etc. So that's what Total Chaos is meant to be.

APA: In terms of the grand narrative of hip-hop history in your book, where do you think Asian Americans fit in?

JC: Asian American hip-hop is real, real important in developing Asian American culture. A lot of folks, like Oliver wang and Professor Deborah Wong at Riverside have looked at it. What's fascinating to me is the way that Asian Americans have adopted not just the music but all the different forms of hip-hop, so you see in a lot of prominent Asian Americans, in turntablism, for instance, people like Q-bert, the whole transformation from DJ'ing to an art form. Now when you have these global worldwide contests, you have DJs from the Philipines and Asia winning, not just Asian Americans, or Asian Canadians. And the whole b-boy, b-girl revival has been ushered in by a large extent, by Asian Americans. Asia-One, one of the major b-girl groups during the '90s, initiated the big b-boy summit in San Diego. That led to the proliferation of b-boy, b-girl crews that are predominantly Asian American. Not to mention all these other areas, from writing and journalism to graffiti, to scenes around the world that are extremely vibrant.

I'm from Hawaii, and I'm always down to rep Hawaii, 'cause there's people like Size, and Slick that are incredibly influential worldwide. It's just the tip of the iceberg that people are beginnig to notice and write about. It's something that's live and vibrant, and a moving target. It's the kind of thing that's practiced just as much at the community level, as it is seen in videos by Jin, or Lyrics Born, or that kind of thing. So for me, I think it's incredible, and developing, and when I hear somebody like Blue Scholars from Seattle or Chan from the East coast, I'm just blown away. I'm really thrilled in the way that this generation continues to make it their own.

APA: How strong of a link is there between this new generation of Asian Americans and activism? Do you see hip-hop as the voice of that generation?

JC: I mean, going back to Blue Scholars, they consider their art to be part and parcel with their activism and their social worldview. And even Jin, though mainly known as a battle rhymer, on his first record, The Rest is History, delved into issues that Asians and Asian Americans are facing. I think at this point in Asian American hip-hop, folks that are in it and doing it definitely recognize what the artform has been, and where it intersects with their particular identity, and how they are using it to represent Asian Americans. In fact, it's always been there, back when i was DJ'ing at UC Davis, there were a number of Asian American rap groups that were out there, like Yellow Peril and Aziatic Apostles,  folks that were inspired by people like Public Enemy and X-Clan and Boogie Down Productions, to express their identity through hip-hop, and that's kind of continued in the rap game, maybe a little less so in turntablism and grafiiti. But you can't help it, you're doing your thing, a lot of times, as Jin noticed, when you go up and battle that's the first thing that opponents will pick out. I think that's something that gets highlighted and people are intimately aware of it, and are dealing with it in different ways. I think that's something that's at the core of the cultural production that Asian Americans are putting out there.

APA: We actually spoke with Dave Liang of the Shanghai Restoration Project about what an Asian American audience is, what its demographic is. Is there such thing as one?

JC: That's a really interesting question for me. It's not an academic question anymore. MTV Chi just launched in December, and before that, MTV Asia, and later this year, MTV K will launch. These are efforts by MTV to get out there, specifically, Chinese-Americans for MTV Chi, MTV Asia for South Asia and MTV K for the Korean American market. When gigantic corporate institutions like MTV are saying that there is an Asian American demographic, it's not an academic question anymore. Now it's a question that's intimately related to material circumstances and ends. The thing that I asked MTV World executive Nusrat, who is sort of the pioneer behind all these sorts of channels, was, "are you guys being premature, are you guys inventing a demographic before it exists?" He said, "no, Asian Americans are the largest and fastest growing racial demographic in the country. As MTV, we'd be fools not to get on top of it."

So a lot of times many of us who've been involved in this, maybe we're promoters or supporters of the scene or artists have fretted about this question: "Could I sit down and put together a national tour, and have places in San Francisco and San Diego and Los Angeles, and New York, and Chicago, where I know I'd have an audience where I could make some money out of this?" And we know that if you're a Latino artist that's getting started, there is that network, from Florida to California. And with African Americans, the best example is the chitlin circuit that goes around and sells out all around the country -- and you would never know about it because there's no mass media paying attention to it. But the churches are talking about it, and the word of mouth is out there in the community, moving from Detroit to Savannah to Los Angeles to Oakland, and making very good money. The question is, can we do that with Asian Americans? I think it's just a matter of time, I think it's going to be there. I think in some respects, the institution is gonna drive the demand. In other words, the supply is going to drive the demand, which is counterintuitive from an economic standpoint, but essentially, when you have MTV beaming into these households with a version of Chinese America, I guarantee that some kid growin up is going to be sitting there, watching it 24/7.

I did a focus group with a bunch of high school students in SF, I asked them, "would you watch this?" They said, "hell yeah, absolutely. It relates to us directly." It's this idea that it's normal for there to be Asian punk-rockers and hip-hoppers and Asian American idols out there and making music. In fact, people are starved for those kinds of images and those kinds of sounds, so I think that's gonna happen. I think the main question is twofold: one, can we control that, can we have any kind of say, in what those images will look like? Because you can't have control over who's gonna see it, what kinds of range of discourse will we have? And B, from a community point of view, are these outlets places that we can use to be able to carry specific and important messages that need to be carried? And I'm not saying that MTV Chi is ever gonna become our CNN, our Asian American CNN, in the way that Chuck D was saying that rap music is our black CNN, because the bottom line is that this is entertainment -- to the people that are putting it out there, the corporate folks behind it.

But as an audience, as the folks who create the demand, are we gonna allow the agenda to be pushed in a certain direction, or are we gonna push back, and want images that are reflective of the diversity of our communities? Which is the discussion that folks are trying to have with hip-hop. There's a sense that hip-hop has left the station and is on a fast track away form the community. That kind of question is going to hit Asian Americans pretty hard over the next five, ten years, and it will happen faster than any of us understand. And what you guys are doing here is, in a lot of ways, the kind of programming that we'll want to see on these kinds of programs in the long run. And yet, the story of what's happening with hip-hop is that you have these channels and fewer avenues for critical shows, shows that are addressing issues, and are trying to get a little deeper, a little smarter.

Published: Thursday, June 8, 2006