Hands down the best book I've ever read. This is required reading. And don't tell me you've already seen the movie! Spike Lee did an exceptional job adapting this book for the big screen; however, there's no way of fitting all of the knowledge, history and life-lessons contained in these pages into a few hours of cinema. If you ask me all kids should have to read this book before they graduate high school.
"When I first started working on this book, I told my editor that I wanted it to do three important things. The first 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." - Jay-Z
