Jeff Chang

Jeff Chang

Jeff Chang has been a hip-hop journalist for over a decade. He has written extensively on race, culture, politics, arts, and music. In 2006, he won an American Book Award for Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop generation.

He began working as a hip-hop journalist in 1991 with URB and The Bomb Hip-Hop magazines, and has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Vibe, Spin, The Nation, and Mother Jones, among others. He was a Senior Editor/Director at Russell Simmons’ 360hiphop.com, and a founding editor of ColorLines magazine.

In 1993, he co-founded and ran the influential hip-hop indie label, SoleSides, now Quannum Projects, helping launch the careers of DJ Shadow, Blackalicious, Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truth Speaker. He has helped produce over a dozen records, including the “godfathers of gangsta rap”, the Watts Prophets.

After being politicized by the anti-apartheid and anti-racist movements at U.C. Berkeley, he worked as a community, labor and student organizer, and as a lobbyist for the students of the California State University system. He received a bachelor’s degree from Cal and a master’s degree in Asian American Studies from UCLA and published scholarly articles on culture and race relations in Hawai’i and Los Angeles. He was an organizer of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention and serves as a board member for several organizations working for social change in youth and community organizing, media justice, culture, the arts, and hip-hop activism.

Born of Chinese and Native Hawaiian ancestry and raised in Hawai’i, he lives in California. He is currently editing an anthology entitled Total Chaos: The Art & Aesthetics of Hip-Hop, due in 2006. He is a big fan of Japanese curry and poi, but not at the same time.

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Posted at 4:00 PM, Sep 05, 2004 in Guests | Permalink