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When I first started working on this book, I told my editor that I wanted it to do three important things. The first thing 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.1
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In October 2009, Shawn Corey Carter (*1969), a leading American rapper and entrepreneur better known as Jay-Z, released his song Empire State of Mind as the third single from his eleventh studio album The Blueprint 3. This song, which features a guest contribution by the R&B and soul singer and songwriter Alicia Keys2 and contains a sample from Love on a TwoWay Street by The Moments,3 is an anthem to New York City, the home of both Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. It became a global hit, has so far sold over three million copies, was number one for five weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, reached number two in the Singles Charts in the United Kingdom, and was ranked the year's second-best song by Rolling Stone. The compressed title of the song implies that living in the shadow of the »Empire State« Building leads to a particular »state of mind« and also insinuates that Jay-Z's state of mind is an »imperial« one. The title probably also refers to Billy Joel's (*1949) ballad New York State of Mind (I976),4 which was not a hit when first released but became popular after the 9/11 attacks and is often played after New York Knicks' and New York Mets' games, as well as to the cover version of this song brought out in 1994 by Nasir bin Olu Darà Jones (*1973), known as Nas.5 This is all the more probable because between 2001 and...