Jay-Z publishes 'Decoded'

Why it matters

Decoded came out November 16, 2010, from Spiegel & Grau. The book is co-written by Jay-Z and the journalist dream hampton, who had been writing about Jay since the early 1990s. The structure is part memoir, part annotation of selected Jay-Z lyrics, with hampton's editorial framing throughout. The book hit #3 on the New York Times bestseller list. The structural conceit (taking individual Jay lyrics and unpacking them line by line, with the rapper himself walking through the writing decisions) was something no major-publisher hip-hop book had really done at this scale before. Decoded is part of the broader 2009-2011 reframing of Jay's public persona toward an elder-statesman, literary, business-savvy register, which would eventually feed into his Tidal launch, his Roc Nation Sports expansion, and his eventual billionaire status. It is also genuinely useful as a piece of writing. If you want to understand the technical specifics of how Jay puts a verse together, Decoded is the document where he walks through it himself. dream hampton's editorial work is part of why the book reads as well as it does. You should read it.