| JAY-Z - 'Decoded' to be released in NZ on November 18th. |
| Written by Shahlin Graves |
| Monday, 27 September 2010 08:42 |
 JAY-Z's long-anticipated memoir will finally be released in NZ on the 18th of November, 2010. The book is entitled 'Decoded' and the cover features the artwork of Andy Warhol’s 'Rorschach'. Former The Source editor Dream Hampton collaborated with Jay-Z on the on the 336-page book, which features interviews with the rapper's inner circle, as well as the man himself. Plus: "this beautifully designed, fully-illustrated book decodes 36 songs from JAY-Z’s extensive catalogue to offer an intimate, first-hand account of one of the most prolific artists of our time." "When I first started working on this book, I told my editor that I wanted it to do three important things. The first was to make the case that hip-hop lyrics - not just my lyrics, but those of every great MC - are poetry if you look at them closely enough. The second was I wanted the book to tell a little bit of the story of my generation, to show the context for the choices we made at a violent and chaotic crossroads in recent history. And the third piece was that I wanted the book to show how hip-hop created a way to take a very specific and powerful experience and turn it into a story that everyone in the world could feel and relate to." - JAY-Z  Earlier this year, Jay-Z talked to Rolling Stone magazine about why he had been reluctant to release the autobiographical work, despite it's completion several years ago: "It's too much. For the book, I was interviewed, people close to me were interviewed. So I was learning a lot of things I didn't know as a child. It's not anything I haven't said in the past, in songs. It's just more detailed. A song is three minutes long. A book doesn't have to rhyme, and it has no time limit, so you can say exactly how everything went." 'Decoded' will be published as a hardcover book, as well as in digital form as an eBook and an iPhone/iPad app. |
