Jay-Z’s Life, Decoded: Yep, It’s Still Much Cooler Than Yours Or Mine

Q: When is it cool to watch tennis?

↵

↵A: When Jay-Z’s doing it.

↵Part two of the NCAA column took a little longer than expected—today’s impromptu Vick feature, Marbury discussion, etc. didn’t help much—but it’s coming along and should be ready tomorrow morning. Until then, hold yourself over by savoring the highlights from Jay-Z’s latest media blitz promoting his new book, Decoded.

↵Watch his honorary appearance with Cornel West at the New York Public Library, and enjoy these highlights courtesy of New York Magazine. Among them:

↵↵On convincing composer Charles Strouse to let him sample Annie for “Hard Knock Life”:
“I told him that we had an essay [contest] at school and I won the essay and we went to see Annie on Broadway and how it affected my life.

↵On recording “This Can’t Be Life” with Scarface:
“We’re sitting in the front room, talking, and his phone rings, and he’s like, ‘Nah, man,’ and you can see something’s happening on the other line. And then he gets on the phone again, and he calls his wife and checks on his children. And then he got off the phone and he told me that one of his friends’ kid was in a house fire. And I’m like, ‘Aw, man, I’m so sorry to hear that, we can do this another time.” And he says, nah, and he sat in the corner, and he wrote this song about the whole experience. He took this very sad experience and [made] this powerful art. It almost had me embarrassed about my verse.”

↵↵And just as compelling, his sitdown with Terry Gross on NPR. Terry Gross is pretty much the coolest the lady in the universe, and Jay-Z is Jay-Z, so... Check it out if you have 45 minutes to kill. And don’t worry, Hov’s still killing it from a music standpoint.