Monday, November 15, 2010
Books Woah, Jay-Z and Cornel West are talking at the library tonight
Posted by Wyatt Williams @wyatt_williams on Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 10:03 AM
Well, sort of. If you head on down to the Central Branch of the Atlanta-Fulton Library tonight, you will be able to see Shawn Carter a.k.a. Hova a.k.a. "King of America" a.k.a. Jay-Z discuss his new book with Cornel West (no a.k.a. needed) via telecast. While a telecast certainly isn't as cool as getting to sit in the same room as these two guys, it still counts for something, right?
In Jay-Z's book, Decoded, he says he had three goals for volume, "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."
From the sound of that description, Decoded should fit nicely with the discussions that have been raised recently by The Anthology of Rap, Yale University's recent 900 page volume of rap lyrics. NY Mag's Sam Anderson says that the anthology is just the book to convince a rap-deprived Simon and Garfunkel fan of the strengths of rap as "lyric poetry." Slate, on the other hand, argues that "too much of it" is poorly or inaccurately transcribed.
Maybe Jay-Z will talk about triple entendres? Maybe West will take back that thing he said about Jay-Z not being motivated? It should be an unusually lively night for the Fulton County Library.
Shawn Jay-Z Carter will be in conversation with Cornel West, a live telecast event from the New York Public Library, tonight Monday, November 15 at 7:00 p.m. at the Central Branch of the Fulton County Library.
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