Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists by Sacha Jenkins

There’s a perversely interesting bon mot on almost every page. –Ryan DombalĮgo Trip’s Book of Rap Lists by Sacha Jenkins, Elliott Wilson, Jeff Mao, Gabe Alvarez, and Brent Rollins Įgo Trip magazine lasted four glorious years and, when the bell tolled in 1998, the five sharp, funny, insanely knowledgeable rap nerds behind the rag proceeded to pour all their obsessive, irreverent love of the genre into this tome, a compulsively re-readable collection of factoids, jokes, and opinions, both defensible and otherwise.

And, impressively, Decoded delivers for both obsessives and neophytes alike. Rap is entertainment-and art.” The book’s snatches of annotated lyrics can be a bit pedantic to those in the know, but remember, Jay is aiming for “everyone in the world” here. On Rakim: “He chose the words because they rhymed, but it was his genius to combine them in a way that made it feel like those words were always meant to be connected.” On Public Enemy: “Chuck D famously called hip-hop the CNN of the ghetto, and he was right, but hip-hop would be boring as the news if all MCs did was report. At this point, it’s foolish to bet against the man born Shawn Corey Carter, and with Decoded, he offers an essential first-hand hip-hop textbook that, for the most part, wisely touts the genre without oversimplifying it.Īnd while the tome might be lacking in juicy details from the rapper’s personal life, he more than makes up for it with incisive ruminations on hip-hop greats turns out JAY-Z is a better critic than most rap critics, too. But part of Jay’s brilliance is his stubborn inability to back down from a challenge, whether it be dealing drugs and avoiding cops in Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects, starting his own record label, Roc-a-Fella, becoming CEO of Def Jam, launching a clothing line, or breaking genre boundaries as the first hip-hop headliner for some of the Earth’s biggest music festivals. One of JAY-Z’s aspirations for Decoded is 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.” It’s a pretty lofty goal, even for JAY-Z.

Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists by Sacha Jenkins