AllRespect.com // Jay-Z's 'Decoded' Cover Features Andy Warhol Art

Posted on 2010-09-23 03:00:13
Artist/band(s): Jay-Z [FB]

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1648464/20100922/jay_z.jhtml

MC's debut tome will be released November 16.By Mawuse Ziegbe

Jay-Z's "Decoded"Photo: Spiegel & Grau

If you've ever driven yourself nuts trying to decipher some of Jay-Z's nimble wordplay, relief is coming soon. Jigga will release his long-awaited literary debut, "Decoded," on November 16, and he unveiled the book's cover Wednesday (September 22).

Although the content will be rooted in Jigga's game-changing lyricism, Hov is taking the visual imagery of the tome from hip-hop to high art, featuring a cover, which Jigga art-directed, emblazoned with art icon Andy Warhol's 1984 work "Rorschach."

Taking an intriguing approach to memoir writing, the famously private rap god will revisit many of his revolutionary rhymes to reveal stories about his life and how it was shaped by hip-hop.

"When I first started working on this book, I told my editor that I wanted it to do three important things," Jay-Z said in a statement. "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."

"This is a book that could only have come from Jay-Z," Chris Jackson, executive editor of publisher Spiegel & Grau, said in the statement. "Every aspect of it reflects his style and ambition and heart. The unique structure he devised — combining intense personal narratives with revealing 'decodings' of some of his most powerful lyrics — underlines his central mission for the book: to use his famously layered and poetic lyrics and his one-of-a-kind life story to tell a wider story about the world he grew up in and the transformative power of hip-hop."

In November, "Decoded" will become the first Hov-penned book to hit shelves, but the MC had been toying with the idea of crossing over into the literary world for years. Jay-Z teamed up with journalist Dream Hampton in 2003 to write "The Black Book," only to shelve the project two years later. Jay-Z will also discuss "Decoded" on November 15, the day before the book is released, at the New York Public Library.

Are you looking forward to Jay-Z's book? Let us know in the comments!

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