And I know there are parts of the world even worse off than that.Ĭopyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. I really enjoyed reading Decoded by Jay-Z, I knew this book would be good because you have to be a good writer to be a good. Those kids in Angola played ball on a court surrounded by open sewage, and while they knew it was bad, they didn't realize just how f-ed up it was. I met people in those shantytowns who lived in oneroom houses with no running water who had to pay a neighbor to get water to go to the bathroom. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire. If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. I've been to shantytowns in Angola that taught me that what we consider to be crushing poverty in the United States has nothing to do with what we have materially- even in the projects, we're rich compared to some people in other parts of the world. Read reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. 'Decoded' is an elegantly designed, incisively written bid for cultural legitimacy by a man whose XXL ego is underscored by an equally outsized inferiority complex (as big egos so often are). To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.

Most Americans were horrified by what was happening down there, but I think for black people, we took it a little more personally.

I don't remember exactly where I was in August 2005, but at the end of that month I was mostly in front of the television, like most other people, transfixed and upset by the story of Hurricane Katrina.

Decoded jay z book review