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1 Copyright 2010 by Shawn CarterAll rights in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random HousePublishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New & GRAU and Design is a registered trademark of Random House, lyric credits are located beginning on this of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication / : 978-0-679-60521-81. Jay-Z. 2. Rap musicians United States Biography. I. 2010 dc22 [B] Gloria Carter and Adnis ReevesWithout your love and love for music none of this would be possibleHow to use the Decoded enhanced eBookNavigationWhenever you want to find a specific section in this eBook, go to the Table of Contents. You can then scroll through the list and click on the chapterlink of your on LyricsEach of the lyric sections in this eBook includes links that you can click on to read notes about the songs written by Jay-Z.

2 Once you are donereading a note, you can navigate back to the lyrics by either:clicking on the footnote number at the start of the noteclicking on the Back to Lyrics link at the beginning of the notes for those enhanced ebook includes video features* throughout the text. When you see an image with the Play icon, simply click the icon to start thevideo.*Video may not play on all readers. Check your user manual for PageCopyrightDedicationHow to use the Decoded eBookJay Z s IntroductionList of VideoPart 1: One Eye OpenThe Revolutionary T-ShirtPublic Service Announcement (The Black Album)American Dreamin (American Gangster)Early This Morning (unreleased)Honor Among PredatorsComing of Age (Reasonable Doubt)Coming of Age (Da Sequel) (Vol. 2 .. Hard Knock Life)D Evils (Reasonable Doubt)Negative Space99 Problems (The Black Album)Ignorant Shit (American Gangster)Part 2: I Will Not LosePortrait of the Artist as a Young StarMost Kings (unreleased)Success (American Gangster)Renegade (The Blueprint)Can I Live?

3 (Reasonable Doubt)Balling and FallingFallin (American Gangster)Big Pimpin (Vol. 3 .. Life and Times of S. Carter)Streets Is Watching (In My Lifetime, Vol. 1)Beat the System Before It Beats YouOperation Corporate Takeover (Mix Tape Freestyle)Moment of Clarity (The Black Album)A Stern DisciplineBreathe Easy (Lyrical Exercise) (The Blueprint)My 1st Song (The Black Album)Part 3: Politics as UsualWhite AmericaYoung Gifted and Black (S. Carter Collection)Hell Yeah (Pimp the System) (Revolutionary But Gangsta)Ears Wide OpenBeware (Jay-Z Remix) (Beware)Blue Magic (American Gangster)Cautionary TalesThis Life Forever (Black Gangster)Meet the Parents (The Blueprint2: The Gift & the Curse)Where I m From (In My Lifetime, Vol. 1)Funeral ParadeMinority Report (Kingdom Come)Dynasty (Intro) (The Dynasty: Roc La Familia)My President Is Black (unreleased)Part 4: Come and Get MeThe Voice in Your Head Is RightRegrets (Reasonable Doubt)This Can t Be Life (The Dynasty: Roc La Familia)Soon You ll Understand (The Dynasty: Roc La Familia)Instant KarmaBeach Chair (Kingdom Come)Lucifer (The Black Album)Our LifeDecember 4th (The Black Album)History (unreleased)EpilogueAcknowledgmentsPermi ssions AcknowledgmentsIllustration CreditsNotes on LyricsJay-Z's Introduction There is video content at this location that is not currently supported for your eReading device.

4 The caption for this content is displayed below. (Running time: 1:30)Videos in This Book*Look for these video clips throughout the eBook or click on the links below to view them Is PoetryA Love Affair with Something TragicWe All Have NothingYou Still Have That Stigma On YouA World with Amnesia Won t Forget Your NameOn CollaborationCan I LiveLife Is Slowly Taking You Away From Who You AreBig Pimpin I Was Not a PushoverMoment of ClarityI m a Fan of Clear IdeasYou re Killing Your SonWhere I m FromNot Everyone Wakes Up Feeling InvincibleDamn, I m Gonna Be a FailureDid It Cost Me Too MuchBy the Third Time, They Were Singing AlongThe Evolution of My Style*Video may not play on all readers. Check your user manual for saw the circle before I saw the kid in the middle. I was nine years old, the summer of 1978,and Marcy was my world.

5 The shadowy bench-lined inner pathways that connected thetwenty-seven six-story buildings of Marcy Houses were like tunnels we kids burrowedthrough. Housing projects can seem like labyrinths to outsiders, as complicated andintimidating as a Moroccan bazaar. But we knew our way sat on top of the G train, which connects Brooklyn to Queens, but not to the city. For Marcy kids, Manhattan is where your parents went towork, if they were lucky, and where we d yellow-bus it with our elementary class on special trips. I m from New York, but I didn t know that at street signs for Flushing, Marcy, Nostrand, and Myrtle avenues seemed like metal flags to me: Bed-Stuy was my country, Brooklyn my I got a little older Marcy would show me its menace, but for a kid in the seventies, it was mostly an adventure, full of concrete corners toturn, dark hallways to explore, and everywhere other kids.

6 When you jumped the fences to play football on the grassy patches that passed for apark, you might find the field studded with glass shards that caught the light like diamonds and would pierce your sneakers just as fast. Turning oneof those concrete corners you might bump into your older brother clutching dollar bills over a dice game, Cee-Lo being called out like hardcorebingo. It was the seventies and heroin was still heavy in the hood, so we would dare one another to push a leaning nodder off a bench the way kidson farms tip sleeping cows. The unpredictability was one of the things we counted on. Like the day when I wandered up to something I d never seenbefore: a cipher but I wouldn t have called it that; no one would ve back then. It was just a circle of scrappy, ashy, skinny Brooklyn kids laughingand clapping their hands, their eyes trained on the center.

7 I might have been with my cousin B-High, but I might have been alone, on my way homefrom playing baseball with my Little League squad. I shouldered through the crowd toward the middle or maybe B-High cleared the way but it feltlike gravity pulling me into that swirl of kids, no bullshit, like a planet pulled into orbit by a name was Slate and he was a kid I used to see around the neighborhood, an older kid who barely made an impression. In the circle, though,he was transformed, like the church ladies touched by the spirit, and everyone was mesmerized. He was rhyming, throwing out couplet after coupletlike he was in a trance, for a crazy long time thirty minutes straight off the top of his head, never losing the beat, riding the handclaps. He rhymedabout nothing the sidewalk, the benches or he d go in on the kids who were standing around listening to him, call out someone s leaningsneakers or dirty Lee jeans.

8 And then he d go in on how clean he was, how nice he was with the ball, how all our girls loved him. Then he d just startrhyming about the rhymes themselves, how good they were, how much better they were than yours, how he was the best that ever did it, in all fiveboroughs and beyond. He never stopped moving, not dancing, just rotating in the center of the circle, looking for his next target. The sun started toset, the crowd moved in closer, the next clap kept coming, and he kept meeting it with another rhyme. It was like watching some kind of combat, buthe was alone in the center. All he had were his eyes, taking in everything, and the words inside him. I was dazzled. That s some cool shit was thefirst thing I thought. Then: I could do night, I started writing rhymes in my spiral notebook. From the beginning it was easy, a constant flow.

9 For days I filled page after page. ThenI d bang a beat out on the table, my bedroom window, whatever had a flat surface, and practice from the time I woke in the morning until I went tosleep. My mom would think I was up watching TV, but I d be in the kitchen pounding on the table, rhyming. One day she brought a three-ring binderhome from work for me to write in. The paper in the binder was unlined, and I filled every blank space on every page. My rhymes looked realchaotic, crowded against one another, some vertical, some slanting into the corners, but when I looked at them the order was connected with an older kid who had a reputation as the best rapper in Marcy Jaz was his name and we started practicing our rhymes into aheavy-ass tape recorder with a makeshift mic attached.

10 The first time I heard our voices playing back on tape, I realized that a recording capturesyou, but plays back a distortion a different voice from the one you hear in your own head, even though I could recognize myself instantly. I saw it asan opening, a way to re-create myself and reimagine my world. After I recorded a rhyme, it gave me an unbelievable rush to play it back, to hearthat time a friend peeked inside my notebook and the next day I saw him in school, reciting my rhymes like they were his. I started writing real tinyso no one could steal my lyrics, and then I started straight hiding my book, stuffing it in my mattress like it was cash. Everywhere I went I d write. If Iwas crossing a street with my friends and a rhyme came to me, I d break out my binder, spread it on a mailbox or lamppost and write the rhymebefore I crossed the street.