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A SCRAPBOOK OF STUFF I'M READING / LISTENING TO / LOOKING AT.

Jul 17, 2011

Jay-Z, Decoded

Some of the best writing about music and art I’ve read in a while. (Read Mark Larson’s review— he gets it right: “I started off a little skeptical, just skimming for pictures and quotes and anecdotes, but then I just had to start over and read it straight through.”) I like what Jay-Z himself has to say about it:

When you’re famous and say you’re writing a book, people assume that it’s an autobiography—I was born here, raised there, suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But that’s not what this is. I’ve never been a linear thinker, which is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful prose. My book is like that, too.

I tweeted some quotes, but my favorite is probably this one, which I quoted in Steal Like An Artist:

We were kids without fathers…so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves…Our fathers were gone, usually because they just bounced, but we took their old records and used them to build something fresh.

Also, this section on Basquiat really impressed me.

Aw hell, the whole book is good. Read it!

Some of the best writing about music and art I’ve read in a while. (Read Mark Larson’s review— he gets it right: “I started off a little skeptical, just skimming for pictures and quotes and anecdotes, but then I just had to start over and read it straight through.”) I like what Jay-Z himself has to say about it:

When you’re famous and say you’re writing a book, people assume that it’s an autobiography—I was born here, raised there, suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But that’s not what this is. I’ve never been a linear thinker, which is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful prose. My book is like that, too.

I tweeted some quotes, but my favorite is probably this one, which I quoted in Steal Like An Artist:

We were kids without fathers…so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves…Our fathers were gone, usually because they just bounced, but we took their old records and used them to build something fresh.

Also, this section on Basquiat really impressed me.

Aw hell, the whole book is good. Read it!