.com Review
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Best Books of the Month, November 2010 ( http://www..com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000623831 ): Like its
multi-hyphenate author, Jay-Z, Decoded is many things at once. At
its core, Decoded is an eloquent and candid memoir detailing the
story of a man who was born in a Brooklyn housing project, spent
his teen years dealing drugs on the streets of Trenton, New
Jersey, and grew up to be one of his generation’s most successful
artists and businessmen. But Decoded is much more than a memoir:
it is an intensely personal homage to hip-hop, as written by a
man who so clearly adores the art form; it is a rare glimpse of
the unexpectedly deep meanings behind the most recognizable rap
lyrics of the last decade; and it is a truly moving collection of
essays on topics ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the decline of
the music industry. Unconventional type design, line drawings,
and photographs visually emphasize the author’s message that rap
is a form that transcends and defies easy categorization. There’s
not much in the way of celebrity gossip here, but what we get,
instead, is a gritty and enormously compelling look inside the
cultural phenomenon of rap, from one of the men who contributed
so much to its shape. --Juliet Disparte
Jay-Z on Decoded
When you're famous and say you're writing a book, people assume
that it's an autobiography--I was born here, raised there,
suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But
that's not what this is. I've never been a linear thinker, which
is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy
logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful
prose. My book is like that, too.
Decoded is first and foremost, a book of rhymes, which is ironic
because I don't actually write my rhymes--they come to me in my
head and I record them. The book is packed with the stories from
my life that are the foundation of my lyrics--stories about
coming up in the streets of Brooklyn in the 80's and 90's,
stories about becoming an artist and entrepreneur and discovering
worlds that I never dreamed existed when I was a kid. But it
always comes back to the rhymes. There's poetry in hip-hop
lyrics--not just mine, but in the work of all the great hip-hop
artists, from KRS-One and Rakim to Biggie and Pac to a hundred
emcees on a hundred corners all over the world that you've never
heard of. The magic of rap is in the way it can take the most
specific experience, from individual lives in unlikely places,
and turn them into art that can be embraced by the whole world.
Decoded is a book about one of those specific lives--mine--and
will show you how the things I've experienced and observed have
made their way into the art I've created. It's also about how my
work is sometimes not about my life at all, but about pushing the
boundaries of what I can express through the poetry of
rap--trying to use words to find fresh angles into emotions that
we all share, which is the hidden mission in even the hardest
hip-hop. Decoded is a book about some of my favorite songs--songs
that I unpack and explain and surround with narratives about what
inspired them--but behind the rhymes is the truest story of my
life.
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Review
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“Compelling . . . provocative, evocative . . . Part
autobiography, part lavishly illustrated commentary on the
author’s own work, Decoded gives the reader a harrowing portrait
of the rough worlds Jay-Z navigated in his youth, while at the
same time deconstructing his lyrics.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New
York Times
“One of a handful of books that just about any hip hop fan should
own.”—The New Yorker
“Elegantly designed, incisively written . . . an impressive leap
by a man who has never been known for small steps.”—Los Angeles
Times
“A riveting exploration of Jay-Z’s journey . . . So thoroughly
engrossing, it reads like a good piece of cultural
journalism.”—The Boston Globe
“Shawn Carter’s most honest airing of the experiences he drew on
to create the mythic figure of Jay-Z . . . The scenes he recounts
along the way are fascinating.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Hip-hop’s renaissance man drops a classic. . . . Heartfelt,
passionate and slick.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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