Rap gets the institutional treatment
» Jay-Z gets a hard cover and Yale can't get any lyrics right.
The author Jay-Z, with requisite hipster glasses / Toronto Sun
If your dark beautiful twisted fantasy is a couple of good hard cover editions with full-on institutional approval, then it is a season of thanks.
But in the case of one, The Anthology of Rap, it's getting ripped on all sides for its lyrical shortcomings. Generated by a couple of professors from Yale, The Anthology of Rap is getting slammed for its errors--it butchers several lyrics, sometimes even changing the meaning of them, as the street references continue to fly over their heads. Slate has been all over this, with the zealotry of a fundamentalist in its truth-seeking mission.
They sit down with Grandmaster Caz to discuss some mistakes, though Caz still supports the book.
Also, Spiegel & Grau has pushed out Jay-Z's Decoded, a nice 317 page $35 autobiography, with some detail about the transformation from Shawn Carter to Jay-Z to where he is now, though the Times points out a few omissions from Jay-Z's official record. But Jay-Z admits to shooting his brother.
And shocking no one except for this Toronto newspaper, Jay-Z admits he had fun dealing crack.
Posted on November 23, 2010. More on: books, codex, rap, jayz
