He normally wrote down his material in a green notebook he carried around with him - but he never took the notebook with him on the streets, he says.

So at that young age, you're not thinking about the destruction you're causing your own community.'Īt the time he was selling, Jay-Z was also coming up with rhymes. You're thinking about paying the extra light bill. 'You're thinking about buying some food for the house. 'At 14 15 years old, you're thinking about sneakers or you're thinking about some sort of relief from all of the pain you're feeling,' he says. He also talks candidly, both in the book and on Fresh Air, about the period in his life when he was a teenager selling crack cocaine on the streets. In his new book Decoded, he unpacks the detailed riffs and lyrics that make up 36 of his songs - while examining both his own life and the growth of hip-hop over the last two decades. Now 40, Jay-Z hasn't forgotten his past - or the lyrics he's written over the years about his childhood in the projects. The day before, you could be celebrating him getting a brand-new bike.'

One day, your best friend could be killed. 'There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day. 'It was a very intense and stressful situation,' he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

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