S. Samuel
With his upcoming Decoded book on the verge of dropping, Jay-Z has describes the conception behind one of his featured Black Album tracks, "Public Service Announcement."
Hov claims a portion of his record was partially inspired by a reporter’s interpretation of one of his performances.
Jay said he personally chose each of the songs featured in “Decoded” for several reasons, and “PSA” made the tome because of its unique origin. Bars from the second verse of the Just Blaze-helmed track were penned after a journalist interpreted the symbolism she picked out in one of Jay’s outfits. However, Hov thought the scribe’s analysis of his look was a bit of a reach. (2 Dope Boyz)
In particular, Jay explained the misread complexities in his appearance.
“The second verse of ‘PSA’ may not have that many hidden jewels in [it], but the story behind why I wrote the second verse is pretty interesting. It’s sort of that look on rap, how this writer had written this article about me wearing this Che Guevara shirt [with a] Jesus piece, and she was like, ‘The Jesus piece is hitting his head,’ and I was like, ‘You’re going a little too far. It’s a T-shirt and a chain. It’s not literally hitting his forehead,’ ” he recalled. “That [experience] inspired the entire verse. ‘I’m like Che Guevara with bling on, I’m complex.’ It’s the whole entire story of how and why I came to write that second verse on ‘PSA.'” (MTV)
To help promote the book, Jay teamed with software powerhouse Microsoft Corp. to utilize their Bing search engine to disperse portions of his text online.
Every page of the book — which details the meanings behind the rap icon’s lyrics and traces the cultural forces that shaped both his life and his music — will be placed in various locations related to the contents of each page. Some will be located in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up, others in places where he drew inspiration in London, and still others in areas that led to the building of his hip-hop empire. They won’t be hidden so much as displayed in unconventional means, such as on pool tables, inswimming pools, on bronze plaques, in clothing racks and so on. Starting today, five to 10 new pages from the book will be unveiled in new locations, in 15 cities around the world. (Billboard)
In August, details on Jay’s upcoming book were released online.
When Rolling Stone spoke to Jay-Z for our June 2010 cover story, he talked about why he was reluctant to release the autobiographical work, even though it was completed several years ago. “It’s too much. For the book, I was interviewed, people close to me were interviewed. So I was learning a lot of things I didn’t know as a child,” Jay-Z told RS. “It’s not anything I haven’t said in the past, in songs. It’s just more detailed. A song is three minutes long. A book doesn’t have to rhyme, and it has no time limit, so you can say exactly how everything went.” Jay-Z also admitted he was most affected by parts of Decoded that concerned his father, who abandoned the family when Jay-Z was 11. “It was still wrong, at the end of the day, but he did stick around at a time where it wasn’t particularly cool or popular,” Jay-Z said. “He married my mom at a time when guys were just leaving, and you’d never even meet your dad. So it made me ease up a little bit in how I felt about him.” (Rolling Stone)
Jay-Z’s Decoded is scheduled to be released on Tuesday, November 16th.
Check out some recent Jay-Z footage below:
