Six top books on the rise and impact of hip-hop

Lindsay Powers is a book lover, writer (bylines include The New York Times and The Washington Post), and author of You Can’t F*ck Up Your Kids: A Judgment-Free Guide to Stress-Free Parenting. At the Amazon Book Review she tagged six great books with which to celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. One title on the list:

Decoded by Jay-Z

Hip-hop is poetry, and its full lyrical wonder is on display in Jay-Z’s Decoded, another Amazon Editors’ Pick. Part biography, part photo essay, part dissection of his greatest hits and deeper cuts—Jay-Z’s 2010 opus is a must-read for any culture and music connoisseur. You’ll be whisked away to the streets of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where a young Shawn Carter grew up in the Marcy Houses—mere miles, but an entire world, away from the glittering skyscrapers of Manhattan. “When I got a little older Marcy would show me its menace, but for a kid in the seventies, it was mostly an adventure,” Jay-Z writes. It’s the setting where he found his voice as an artist—and his swagger. “Even back then, I thought I was the best,” says Jay-Z, who would go on to win 24 Grammys (tied with Kanye West for the most of any rapper), sell more than 140 million records, and hold the record for the most No. 1 albums of any solo artist on the Billboard 200.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue