Jay-Z: Made in America

“My Brooklyn Homeboy JAY-Z is one of the most prolific and gifted rappers of all time. My man Michael Eric Dyson is uniquely qualified to interpret JAY-Z’s art and cultural meaning, and this dope book is all the proof we need.” —Spike Lee

JAY-Z is America at its scrappy, brash, irreverent, soulful, ingenious best: as transcendent a cultural icon as Frank Sinatra, as adventurous a self-made billionaire as Mark Zuckerberg, as gifted a poet as Walt Whitman. As he reaches the half-century mark, logs thirty years as a recording artist, becomes the genre’s first billionaire, reigns as an elder statesman in a field teeming with artists half his age, and continues to make relevant rap records that chart―and that chart an artistic and political response to revived racism and renewed hostility to blackness―it is an auspicious time to examine JAY-Z’s ideas, gifts and impact, to take measure of his stride as a cultural colossus. And there is no one better suited to the task than Michael Eric Dyson, who has investigated and championed hip hop, and the work of JAY-Z, as a critical American art form, for decades.