Decoded
I don't necessarily love Jay-Z's music, but I wanted to read this book because I thought it would be a really interesting look into how some of the biggest hip hop artists made it to the top. I was blown away after realizing how much effort some of these people put in when success isn't guaranteed. Jay-Z tells the story of his life with lyrics, underlying meanings, and metaphors. He starts off by talking about his early life in Brooklyn and then constantly refers back to it and connects it to what happens later in his life.
The story is in the past tense obviously, and it is written with so much detail that it feels like you are living in it. He tells the story of how he grew up, and how he watched hip hop grow up at the same time. It is a story of how his surroundings influenced him and made him successful and how he valued hard work from a young age. I legitimately think that anybody could read this book. Excluding young children too immature and the elderly, most people would find this book very eye-opening. It takes people who have prejudices about rappers and their lifestyles, and gives them an actual look at how it works, and makes them appreciate it.
There were three specific reasons that Jay-Z wrote this book, firstly, he wanted to show that rapping isn't just the drugs and profanity that everyone thinks it is. Secondly, he wanted to prove that there are always underlying meanings in rap quotes, and most people never even see them. Lastly, he tried to make people understand how life in Brooklyn actually was for a young kid, and how it impacted the people who grew up there.
He writes with a very unique style. Jay-Z constantly uses his own rap lyrics in the middle of a paragraph to describe how he felt at a certain point. It keeps the book flowing and much easier to read. First, he will talk about a situation and then he breaks it down and analyzes avery portion. Lots of metaphors and analogies are used to explain to the reader how thongs affect our everyday life, which helps to connect to the book.
The tone of the book is really hard to capture in one word, I would have to describe it as "reminiscent" or "appreciative". He looks back at everything that has happened to him in a positive light. Even if bad things happened, they helped him become stronger and smarter. He really sounds confident about himself, but you have to be in order to be successful.
In general, the book is about how Jay -Z grew up selling cocaine on the streets to support his family from a very young age, and saw things that changed his life. He talks about how every day he went outside, he was afraid for his life, because people were killed over drugs all the time. But the value of hard work stayed with him for his whole life "You learn to compete as if your life depended on it, that's the lesson I brought with me to the so called "legitimate" world." He talks about his struggles rising up in the music industry, and how hard it was to please everyone.
Throughout the book, he constantly gives applause to other rappers, and other people in the music industry. I think he uses eros by showing how much respect and love there is in the hip hop world. He says you have to compete to be better than everyone else, but there is always respect between them. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to almost anyone. For closed minded people, this book might not be a good choice. You have to accept that there are drugs, violence, and murder in the world. Then you have to be willing to read about it and try to see how they impact certain people. I would give this book a 9 out of 10. It was put together perfectly, he criticized not only other people in the book, but himself too. It gives a deeper meaning to rap lyrics, and you start to see them as poets. Some parts of the book are a little slow, but it is an accurate book, and sometimes his life was a little slow. This book is an
