![]() By then he was already on the streets, selling cocaine. ![]() The early part of his life is well rendered: born Shawn Carter, he grew up in one of the most deprived areas of New York and, abandoned by his father, at the age of 12 shot his crack-addicted brother in the shoulder for stealing from him. Alongside the main text is a wide selection of lyrics which the rapper has annotated to explain their provenance.īut what emerges is anything but bland: while not as well written (indeed, it's a ghostwrite, with journalist Dream Hampton), it is a book as revealing in its way as Bob Dylan's Chronicles or even Charles Mingus's Beneath the Underdog. This episode isn't retold in Decoded, which is not an autobiography but rather a scrappy memoir, containing much of the Jay-Z creation myth, but nothing, for example, about his relationship with his wife and rival performer Beyoncé. Not for anything would he give himself away, or be anything less than gracious. But what Jay-Z really made of it was impossible to tell: better than most pop performers he understands the power of a metaphor, but he simply laughed, too, and put his own gold chain around Attenborough's neck. Nor, given everything we know about Ross, is it surprising that he should think it amusing to let viewers draw the conclusion that rappers are, well, nothing more than party-hardened apes. Perhaps it's understandable that the 83-year-old Attenborough should have missed the racially charged undertones of this gag. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |