As an artist, JAY-Z really gets this simple aesthetic fact. Art is at its best when you hear a lyric and it brings an image to mind, or when you view a painting and it makes you hear a sound.
It’s the process of creating one form of sensory impression by cultivating another form of sensory impression. I use the idea of synesthesia to describe my approach to producing, and it’s especially true when I’m working with Jay. Over the last quarter century, Jay has established himself as one of the most gifted artists of any genre to ever speak into a microphone. MILES WHITEįOREWORD By Pharrell I was honored when Michael Eric Dyson asked me to pen this foreword to his reflections on the incredible impact my dear friend and longtime collaborator JAY-Z has had on the world.
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TONI MORRISON JAY-Z portrays himself as an entrepreneur whose beginnings as a street corner crack dealer are the stuff of Horatio Alger, no less part of the mythical American Dream than corporate robber barons or big city crime bosses. It’s constantly invented, always brand-new, but somehow familiar and known. It’s American, indisputably American, and ethnically marginal.
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And it’s interesting to me as a writer because it’s so full of contradictions. It is an American cultural phenomenon, and as such, it’s more than any of the definitions or connotations that I have mentioned. Rubin BUSINESSMAN AND PARTNER OF THE PHILADELPHIA 76ERSĪn upright man who embodies the spirit of true democracy in the quest to reform a criminal justice system that is fundamentally unfair to millions of black folk across the land To Robert Frederick Smith BUSINESSMAN, INVESTOR, AND PHILANTHROPISTĪ righteous black man who embodies the best of our people and a noble tradition of using wealth to preserve black culture and to help the next generation by paying off the student loan debt of nearly 400 Morehouse College graduates and Michael G. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us./piracy. Copyright infringement is against the law. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. Or visit us online at us./newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. As he enters his fifties, and to mark his thirty years as a recording artist, this is the perfect time to take a look at JAY-Z's career and his role in making this nation what it is today.īegin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page This book wrestles with the biggest themes of JAY-Z's career, including hustling, and it recognizes the way that he's always weaved politics into his music, making important statements about race, criminal justice, black wealth and social injustice. But as a rapper, he's sometimes not given the credit he deserves for just how great an artist he's been for so long. JAY-Z: Made in America is the fruit of Michael Eric Dyson's decade of teaching the work of one of the greatest poets this nation has produced, as gifted a wordsmith as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost and Rita Dove. "Dyson's incisive analysis of JAY-Z's brilliance not only offers a brief history of hip-hop's critical place in American culture, but also hints at how we can best move forward." -Questlove