Jay-Z is set to rerelease his New York Times bestseller Decoded on November 1st (via RR).
The memoir, which deconstructs lyrics from his tracks, will be reissued in a new expanded paperback that includes a new chapter, seven additional illustrations and three new decoded tracks (“I Know,” “Young Gz,” “Lost Ones”
).
Hov also lent his pen to a new Afterword to be included in the book. “What still excites me about rap is that it’s an open thread, a cipher that listeners find their own meanings in,” he writes. “The point of this book is not to settle arguments or transform rap songs into neat stories with a beginning, middle, and end. Rather, I’m trying to point readers to some ideas and information, get them to see deeper into the music than they saw before and learn more about worlds different from their own (or find new ways of looking at the worlds they already know)—to find their own meanings and connect them back to their own lives. I want readers to see the craft and learn the context—and I want them to still be able to feel the magic, and enjoy the show.”
