Jay-Z’s literary venture, Decoded , is set to hit bookstores November 16th. The cover, (which also doubles as Hov’s profile pic on Twitter ) is an image from Andy Warhol’s 1984 “Rorschach” paintings. Inside, the book will feature illustrations and decode 36 of Jay-Z’s songs. Accompanying the hardcover edition, Random House plans to release Decoded as an eBook and iPhone/iPad application. Below is an excerpt from Jay on the project.

“When I first started working on this book, I told my editor that I wanted it to do three important things. 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.”

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Also, just a side note… (I’m just sayin’)

Give me a good reason as to why he would have used an image like this paired with the title “Decoded”? Like I said, I’m just saying…

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