“I had no idea what to expect when I started this manuscript, but now that I’ve finished it, my main response is gratitude to Jay-Z, not only for his honesty about his life story but for being willing to decode these lyrics, so that someone like me has access to them. Just from the few hip-hop/rap lyrics I’d heard, I knew there was something important going on — street news, social history, life stories of people who are so often invisible. But I had no idea how rich these stories were. I find myself making connections of my own — Jay-Z’s comments about both poets and hustlers “bending” language, for instance, had me recalling Emily Dickinson’s “tell the truth, but tell it slant.” The notes to the lyrics had me riffing on T.S. Eliot’s notes to “The Wasteland.” Most of all, this book has reconnected me with the Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was really the story of a life saved, and a book written so that other kids that our society considers “throwaways” might find a way out, another way to live. Well, Malcolm’s book did that for many young people, and I hope that this book will as well. I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface of this brilliant book, and will be returning to the decodings over and over. If I’m given a choice between going clubbing to hear hip-hop, and going to a monastery to chant the psalms with Benedictine monks, the monks will win out every time. But as a poet, I am just so pleased to be given a better sense of the workings of this vital art form.”– Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk
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