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From Barnes & NobleT his disarmingly honest autobiography by rap legend Jay-Z is now an enhanced paperback edition, containing new lyrics and annotations. David Garber Michiko Kakutanigives the reader a harrowing portrait of the rough worlds Jay-Z navigated in his youth, while at the same time deconstructing his lyrics, in much the way that Stephen Sondheim does in his new book, Finishing the HatDecoded leaves the reader with a keen appreciation of how rap artists have worked myriad variations on a series of familiar themes (hustling, partying and "the most familiar subject in the history of rapwhy I'm dope") by putting a street twist on an arsenal of traditional literary devices (hyperbole, double entendres, puns, alliteration and allusions), and how the author himself magically stacks rhymes upon rhymes, mixing and matching metaphors even as he makes unexpected stream-of-consciousness leaps that rework old clichs and play clever aural jokes on the listener The New York Times From the Publisher"Compelling .