Decoding More Than Just “Decoded”

Jay-Z’s Decoded had been on my list to read for awhile. I finally sat down and read it. Half way through the second section of the book, something hit me. I felt that all he talked about was dealing drugs and being in the ghetto. It seemed as if he was always stuck in the past or felt he had to remind himself everyday of where he came from. Even when he did rap about something else, it would always seem to do a 180 and the subject matter would somehow happen to be about selling drugs or the ghetto. It was like he looked at his schedule and said “I haven’t reminded myself of where I’m came from and how much of a hustler I am and will always be, therefore I need to make sure I do that.” Can you live life a certain way for so long that no matter how far you are away from the past, or that certain life you used to live, you feel you always need to be connected to in some shape or form? He has recorded 11 studio albums and one starts to wonder, “How many more songs and ways can you rap about drugs and the ghetto?”

I’m a very observant person so, I wanted to dig even further and see if I could understand this through another person’s eyes. One of my ex-partners came from the “ghetto”, aka poverty. It would make me feel uncomfortable every time he would mention to people where he came from because he would always go into detail. Sometimes I felt he was trying to make himself feel better by saying he’s out of there now and he’s doing better for himself; like he has to remind himself everyday of that. “By any means necessary” was a phrase that Jay-Z would commonly use in his raps (coming from Malcolm X). Those words rang in my head because I remember stories that my ex-partner had told me, even though I told him I didn’t want to hear them because I didn’t want to think the worst of him because I never saw him in that way. I was told “kick door” stories; your typical theft and selling drugs stories. Is your life that bad to the point that you have to make other people’s lives miserable as well? ‘Robbing Peter to pay Paul’. Sometimes even when he was well-off, he would still think of going back to those things because now he had gotten greedy. In a nutshell, Jay-Z basically said that you say you’re doing what you do in order to get out of the financial stump you’re in; but then you want more, whether it be the girls, cars, clothes, etc. As Kendrick Lamar said ‘VANITY SLAVES’.

Then I took a look through my eyes to see if I could see myself in the same position as them…I could. My slogan isn’t “by any means necessary” because I’m fortunate enough to not have to deal with those struggles. But in the back of my head, whether I believe it or not, my fight is wanting a better life for the following generation within my family. I feel each generation within a family should be better than the last, so that is why I do what I do. Everyone wants to succeed, but it’s all in the path we take and what we do to get there whether it is right or wrong. I didn’t choose to sell drugs or steal because I wasn’t raised in that environment. I lived in the good parts of the city or the suburbs so college was always in my plans from the beginning. We all have greed in some way shape or form, and my greed comes from succeeding. Even if I succeed in one thing, I feel there’s something else I can succeed in which can lead to a life of never reaching self-fulfillment. We all have to ask ourselves, when will the greed stop so we can become satisfied and leave our vice alone; because it will eventually become a vice if it wasn’t one already. Can we let go of our past without being reminded or reminding people of it every day? We don’t have to remind people of it every day by telling them. They can already tell by the way we carry ourselves that we have a background different from theirs and that’s why we may do things differently. If they want to know the story, we can tell them, but we don’t have to shout it from the roof every day. And no, we can’t let go of our past. Our past it what makes us who we are presently and it’s influential to our future. Some people can hide their past in the deepest darkest depths of their brain better than others, but it will never be forgotten though.

Everyone has their own version of Decoded. Some people’s version is just prettier than others.