Yesterday Billboard.com debuted the cover art for Jay-Z’s forthcoming memoir, Decoded, and it features a piece from Andy Warhol’s 1984 series, the “Rorschach” paintings. Perhaps this nods at the fact that Jay-Z deconstructs 36 of his songs in the book rather than sticking to a traditional narrative format; he’s also a longtime fan of Warhol (among other contemporary artists), shouting him out in the lyrics to “Ain’t I” (“I got Warhols on my halls’ walls!”). Click through for a closer look at the cover and a brief excerpt from the book, which is set to hit shelves on November 16.
“When I first started working on this book, I told my editor that I wanted it to do three important things. The first was to make the case that hip-hop lyrics — not just my lyrics, but those of every great MC — are poetry if you look at them closely enough. The second was I wanted the book to tell a little bit of the story of my generation, to show the context for the choices we made at a violent and chaotic crossroads in recent history. And the third piece was that I wanted the book to show how hip-hop created a way to take a very specific and powerful experience and turn it into a story that everyone in the world could feel and relate to.” – excerpt from Billboard.com