A memoir, a selection of Jay-Z lyrics, an analysis of the prosody of works by Jay-Z and other people. Probably works much better as a print book than an ebook, because in the print version the notes on the lyrics are on the facing page and in the ebook they're footnotes. It's very clear and teacherly; I kind of got the feeling Jay-Z was writing to an ideal reader who was a combination of himself at thirteen, excited about the possibilities of hip hop, and a present-day thirteen year old who would need a lot of the context explained and aesthetics analyzed. His account of early hip hop is very different from Jeff Chang's -- not contradictory, but with very different emphases. Gets a bit repetitive at the end.