Decoded

Part memoir, part annotated songbook, Decoded prints the lyrics to some three dozen of Jay-Z’s songs alongside his own footnotes explaining the wordplay, references, and buried meanings most listeners miss. Around them he tells the story of his life, the Brooklyn projects, the crack trade, and the rise to mogul, and argues that hip-hop is a serious poetic tradition. Lavishly illustrated and unusually literary for a rapper’s book, it doubles as a defense of rap as art.