JAY Z'S MEMOIR "DECODED" SET FOR INT'L RELEASE IN NOVEMBER, GET A GLIMPSE HERE...

 That's righhttt! November 16th, your boy Hov, in collaberation with respected hip hop journalist dream hampton (she uses small case letters) , is releasing a book entitled, Decoded, a 336 page first-person memoir, which decodes 36 of his songs, and also features illustrations. The cover art (above) is an image from Andy Warhol's "Rorschach" paintings. Word is, Random House will also release an ebook and iPhone/iPad application. The book can be pre-ordered here. Check out this excerpt from the author himself about the project:

“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.”

Here's what Jay had to say when RollingStone magazine talked him for their June cover story. Pop the Trunk to read what he had to say...

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.”

Since Decoded was completed several years ago, it remains unclear whether the book will feature additional chapters detailing Jay-Z’s last few years, including The Blueprint 3, his 360 deal with Live Nation, being a part owner of the New Jersey Nets and, his most guarded subject, his marriage to Beyoncé. –RollingStone

This is definitely on our Christmas list! [Source]