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By Tania Lobo: As a teenage hustler from selling crack cocaine to becoming one of America’s biggest rapper, Jay-Z talks about his life, and explains the hip-hop culture in his literary debut. Decoded, which is the debut of the rapper as a writer in his autobiography, is slated to release in New York recently.
The New York City native writes in a little coarse Brooklyn street language, since this is the place where he grew up. He speaks of a 1978 summer, when 9 years old Shawn Carter who was growing up in the Marcy housing projects saw people gathering around a kid named Slate. Slate was insanely “rhyming, throwing out couplet after couplet like he was in a trance, for a crazy long time — 30 minutes straight off the top of his head, never losing the beat, riding the handclaps.” Young Shawn felt inspired, “like a planet pulled into orbit by a star.” He went home that night and started writing his own rhymes. Thus began the journey of Shawn to becoming Jay-Z.
He recollects “Everywhere I went I’d write.” “If I was crossing a street with my friends and a rhyme came to me, I’d break out my binder, spread it on a mailbox or lamppost and write the rhyme before I crossed the street.” And if he didn’t have a notebook with him, he’d run to “the corner store, buy something and then find a pen to write on the back of the brown paper bag.” Later he started memorizing and creating “little corners in my head where I stored rhymes.” Jay-Z now has more No. 1 albums than Elvis he has become what he wrote “key in the lock” — “the king of hip-hop.”
The part autobiography is part lavishly illustrated with commentary on the author’s own work. “Decoded” will give the reader a vexing portrait of the rough worlds that Jay-Z have treaded. The rough roads and the deconstruction of his lyrics are in much the same way that Stephen Sondheim does in his new book, “Finishing the Hat.”
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