Decoded | A

Jay-Z never does anything halfway, and his memoir Decoded is no different. Part anecdotal, part lyrical analysis and part scrapbook, Decoded is about as raw as this rapper will ever get.

The book sucks you in from the very start. With stories about hiding his rhymes under his mattress to selling crack on street corners in his teenage years, this book becomes addictive fast. But the story quickly moves beyond shock value. In between the tales of his lives, Jay-Z analyzes rap as a whole, from commentary about the double and triple entendre behind provocative phrases to line-by-line analysis of some of his most well known lyrics. When he makes assertions that rappers are like poets and then discusses assonance, homonyms and percussive rhythms, it's hard not to believe him.

Decoded seems like a misnomer at times. As a narrator, Jay-Z comes off as likeable yet aloof. He seems mostly grounded in terms of his success, but he has his moments of conceit too with sections entitled "I am the Mike Jordan of Recording." With his contradictions, his personality seems no more decoded than the gold Rorschach blot on the cover. But one thing is clear: Jay-Z is more than just an artist or a businessman, he is an advocate for rap. To him, rapping is not a genre just about the money, the girls, the fame or the bragging rights, but about reliving life struggles and creating characters that anyone can connect with.

In that sense, Decoded can be perceived as an extended rap song. While most readers cannot relate to hustling, meeting Bono and Michael Jordan or even growing up black, the national distress over Hurricane Katrina and the revolutionary election of President Barack Obama touched us all the same. So while his life experiences are far removed from the norm, his discussion of these events — and his rap "My President Is Black" — is one of many instances that show his perspective may not be so different from our own.