Artists

Decoded – Jay-Z

Decoded – by Jay-Z
Date read: 1/25/23. Recommendation: 10/10.

Jay-Z details his own story and deconstructs the lyrics of the most important songs in his career. I couldn’t put this book down—Jay-Z’s rise to become a self-made billionaire is one of the most inspiring stories you will come across. It’s crazy smart and packs a punch. There are great lessons in fundamentals, depth, truth, flow, and motion that are worth reflecting on and instilling in your own life and work.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Origins:
Nine years old, summer of 1978, saw a circle of kids on his way home from playing Little League with his cousin and he moved through the crowd towards the middle, “It felt like gravity pulling me into that swirl of kids, no bullshit, like a planet pulled into orbit by a star…His name was Slate and he was a kid I used to see around the neighborhood, an older kid who barely made an impression. In the circle, though, he was transformed, like the church ladies touched by the spirit, and everyone was mesmerized. He was rhyming, throwing out couplet after couplet like he was in a trance, for a crazy long time—thirty minutes straight off the top of his head, never losing the beat, riding the handclaps…I was dazzled. That’s some cool shit was the first thing I thought. Then: I could do that.” Jay-Z

Natural talent: Started writing rhymes in his spiral notebook that same night. The paper was unlined and he filled every space on every page, writing vertically, horizontally, crowding words together as best he could, scratching out others.

Finding your voice: Jay connected with an older kid and the best rapper in Marcy, Jaz-O. The two would practice their rhymes and record on an old tape recorder with a makeshift microphone attached. “I saw it as an opening, a way to re-create myself and reimagine my world. After I recorded a rhyme, it gave me an unbelievable rush to play it back, to hear that voice.” Jay-Z

Life experiences give you credibility: “I wasn’t even in high school yet and I’d discovered my voice. But I still needed a story to tell.” Jay-Z

Jay wasn’t sure he could get rich from rap, but he knew it would become much bigger than it was before it went away and he leaned into that.

“Manager? That’s a promotion, not a dream.” Jay-Z

Flow:
“From the beginning, it was easy, a constant flow. For days, I filled page after page. Then I’d bang a beat out on the table, my bedroom window, whatever had a flat surface, and practice from the time I woke in the morning until I went to sleep.” Jay-Z

“Everywhere I went I’d write. If I was crossing a street with my friends and a rhyme came to me, I’d break out my binder, spread it on a mailbox or lamppost and write the rhyme before I crossed the street. I didn’t care if my friends left me at the light, I had to get it out.” Jay-Z

“I was good at battling and I practiced it like a sport. I’d spend free time reading the dictionary, building my vocabulary for battles.”

Loved rhyming for the sake of rhyming and the challenge of structuring rhymes in the most effective way possible—moving around couplets and triplets, stacking double entendres, and speed rapping.

Fundamentals:
Jay-Z and his early mentor Jaz-O would go back and forth to each other’s houses and write rhymes for hours. They’d lock themselves in a room with pen and paper. They would test new flows and focus on improving their speed, delivery, and composition.

Putting in the work: “It’s true that I’m able to sometimes come up with songs in a matter of minutes after hearing a track, but that’s a skill that I’ve honed over hundreds of hours of practice and work since I was nine. My earliest mentors in rap taught me that making music is work, whether it was Jaz locking himself in a room working on different flows or Big Daddy Kane taking the time to meticulously put together a stage show. There’s unquestionably magic involved in great music, songwriting, and performances—like those nights when a star athlete is in the zone and can’t miss. But there’s also work. Without the work, the magic won’t come.” Jay-Z

“A tour requires stamina, willpower, and the ability to self-motivate, to hype yourself into game mode night after night….When it comes to signing up new talent, that’s what I’m looking for—not just someone who has skill, but someone built for this life. Someone who has the work ethic, the drive.”

First exposure to the record industry:
When Jay-O got a record deal with EMI in the UK, Jay went along and soaked up all that he could in the recording sessions and meetings.

Producers at EMI convinced Jaz-O to record a pop song with a ukulele on the hook, “Hawaiian Sophie” which tanked. EMI stopped returning his phone calls and instead started courting Jay behind his back. Jay was sick to his stomach and thought the business lacked any sense of honor and integrity. So he buried his rap dreams and went back to hustling.

Hustling:
Got into selling drugs because he was already risking his life by living in the projects, he might as well get paid for it. A friend introduced him to hustling (neither smoked nor used their own supply) and communicated that it required vision and hustle.

“In the mirror, all I saw was a hustler—a hustler who wrote rhymes on corner-store paper bags and memorized them in hotel rooms far away from home—but still, first a hustler. It’s who I’d been since I was sixteen years old on my own in Trenton, New Jersey. I couldn’t even think about wanting to be something else; I wouldn’t let myself visualize another life. But I wrote because I couldn’t stop. It was a release, a mental exercise, a way of keeping sane.” Jay-Z

Find your deep, dark place and create from there:
Jay was interested in the interior of a young kid’s head, his psychology, and bringing that to life through his lyrics. Everything he wrote he wanted to be rooted in the truth of an experience “To tell the story of the kid with the gun without telling the story of why he has it is to tell a kind of lie. To tell the story of the pain without telling the story of the rewards—the money, the girls, the excitement—is a different kind of evasion.” Jay-Z

“I lost people I loved, was betrayed by people I trusted, felt the breeze of bullets flying by my head. I saw crack addiction destroy families—it almost destroyed mine—but I sold it too…But no matter what, it is the place where I learned not just who I was, but who we were, who all of us are.” Jay-Z

Embracing contradiction: “For any image or symbol or creative act to mean something, it has to touch something deeper, connect to something true. I know that the spirit of the struggle and insurgency was woven into the lives of the people I grew up with in Bed-Stuy, even if in sometimes fucked up and corrupted ways….But to have contradictions—especially when you’re fighting for your life—is human, and to wear the Che (Guevara) shirt and the platinum and diamonds together is honest. In the end I wore it because I meant it.” Jay-Z

“The words are witty and blind, abstract and linear, sober and fucked up. And when we decode that torrent of words—by which I mean really listen to them with our minds and hearts open—we can understand their world better. And ours, too. It’s the same world.” Jay-Z

Entrepreneurial mindset:
“You have to make sure the match runs according to your style and rhythm and not get caught up in someone else’s gameplay. You have to be willing to suffer and to make someone else suffer, because only one of you can win.” Jay-Z

A great product and the hustle to move it are the ultimate advantage.

“Success could only mean self-sufficiency, being a boss, not a dependent.”

“I’m also lucky never to have needed the approval of the gatekeepers in the industry because from the start we came into the game as entrepreneurs. That gave me the freedom to just be myself, which is the secret to any long-term success, but that’s hard to see when you’re young and desperate to get put on.” Jay-Z ^ the opposite of this was Jaz-O recording “Hawaiian Sophie” because he trusted producers that got Will Smith airplay even though it didn’t resonate with him.

The depth of hip-hop:
It’s dense with multiple meanings and unresolved layers you might not understand until you’ve listened to it multiple times through. Those layers of meaning help get at complicated truths in a way that straightforward storytelling might not.

“Every hustler knows the value of a feint. It keeps you one step ahead of whoever’s listening in, which is also a great thing about the art of hip-hop. And it makes it all the more gratifying to the listener when they finally catch up.” Jay-Z

Rap is built to handle contradictions: “It doesn’t force you to pretend to be only one thing or another, to be a saint or sinner. It recognizes that you can be true to yourself and still have unexpected dimensions or opposing ideas…The real bullshit is when you act like you don’t have contradictions inside you, that you’re so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places.” Jay-Z

The curse of outrage:
“It’s hard to beat the entertainment value of people who deliberately misunderstand the world, people dying to be insulted, running around looking for a bullet to get in front of.” Jay-Z

Life is motion:
“I’ve always believed in motion and action, in following connections wherever they take me, and in not getting entrenched. My life has been more poetry than prose, more about unpredictable leaps and links than simple steady movement, or worse, stagnation. It’s allowed me to stay open to the next thing without feeling held back by a preconceived notion of what I’m supposed to be doing next.” Jay-Z

The truth is always relevant:
“When it seems like I’m bragging or threatening or whatever, what I’m actually trying to do is embody a certain spirit, give voice to a certain emotion. I’m giving the listener a way to articulate that emotion in their own lives, however it applies. Even when I do a song that feels like a complete autobiography, like ‘December 4th,’ I’m still trying to speak to something that everyone can find themselves in.” Jay-Z

“My songs are my stories, but they take on their own life in the minds of people listening. The connection that creates is sometimes overwhelming.” Jay-Z

Three Kings – Zack O'Malley Greenburg

Three Kings – by Zack O’Malley Greenburg
Date read: 12/6/22. Recommendation: 8/10.

The story of Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and hip-hop’s multibillion-dollar rise. Greenburg digs into each icon as an artist and entrepreneur, examining similarities and differences in how they cut their own paths to the top. As the book reveals, Diddy, Dre, and Jay-Z all grew up effectively fatherless, developed a flair for music, started their own record labels, and released classic albums before moving on to become multifaceted moguls. But each legend had his own unique strengths that distinguished him along the way.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.


My Notes:

Upbringing:
“Diddy, Dre, and Jay-Z all grew up effectively fatherless, developed a flair for music, started their own record labels, and released classic albums before moving on to become multifaceted moguls.” ZG

Jay-Z’s Success:
Legendary lyricist who plays business like a chess game, plotting multiple moves ahead. Most successful recording artist of the three, every album he’s released has been certified platinum (multiplatinum every single year from ’98 through ’03). 

Jay-Z’s Origins:
“A year before the release of ‘Rappers Delight,’ Shawn Carter discovered hip-hop in his own backyard. On a sweaty summer afternoon in Brooklyn’s Marcy Houses, a bleak public-housing project…a nine-year-old boy soon to be known as Jay-Z noticed a group of kids standing in a circle. One of them, a local rapper called Slate, freestyles about everything—anything—that crossed his mind, from the sidewalk to the crowd around him to the quality of his own rhymes. He rapped until dusk fell, spitting lyrics as though possessed.” ZG

When Jay-Z first saw slate he thought, that’s some cool shit, then imagined how he could also do that. He went home and started filling up spiral notebooks with his own rhymes. He would pound beats on the kitchen table and scour dictionaries for new words. 

Jay-Z’s name: childhood nickname (Jazzy) and two subway lines near the Marcy Houses (J and Z), homage to his first mentor (Jaz-O).

Fundamentals:
In 1984, Jay-Z met Jonathan ‘Jaz-O’ Burks who showed him the ropes—metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia, structure for writing songs. 

Hustling:
Jay-Z’s childhood friend and neighbor in the Marcy Houses, DeHaven Irby, pulled him into the drug trade (crack). They would venture to Trenton, New Jersey, or down south to Maryland to deal away from their home. The only thing that pulled Jay off the streets was music. 

First trip overseas:
In 1988, Jaz-O landed a deal with UK-based label EMI. Brought Jay-Z (his then-apprentice) to London with him for two months. EMI ghosted Jaz-O when his record didn’t land, Jay-Z became disillusioned with hip-hop and turned back to the drug trade.

Self-made:
Jay-Z used profits from drug dealing to start a record company since major labels balked at hip-hop and it was the only way to get his music out. Started his own label: Roc-A-Fella Records a play on the world’s first billionaire (John D. Rockefeller) and the draconian drug laws bearing his family’s name. 

Debut album:
Reasonable Doubt: “Jay-Z’s dexterous rhymes and skillful rendering of a hustler’s life went on to sell 420,000 units in its first year. The record established Jay as one of his generation’s premier rappers.” ZG

Seize creative control: Two indie labels were helping with distribution for the first album. When Jay pressed them for unpaid royalties, they couldn’t cover what they owed. Jay then negotiated his release and the rights to his master recording. This allowed him to shop his record to major labels for a second run which Def Jam bought into by purchasing one-third of Roc-A-Fella for $1.5 million. 

Create your own:
During the late ‘90s, Jay was wearing clothes by the European designer Iceberg. Soon many of his fans were doing the same. Damon Dash (Jay’s business partner) negotiated a meeting with the bigwigs at Iceberg to land an endorsement deal. Jay and Dash asked for millions and the use of a private jet. Iceberg offered free clothes. This experience led them to start the clothing company “Rocawear” and take a do-it-yourself approach.

“They hauled sewing machines into Roc-A-Fella offices and hired people to stitch together early Rocawear prototypes. They weren’t anywhere close to building something scalable: shirts took three weeks each to make. Finally, they asked Russell Simmons for advice, and he set them up with his partners at Phat Farm….” ZG

“Soon Rocawear replaced Iceberg in Jay-Z’s lyrics and on his person, and the fledgling brand became a real business. Jay-Z had discovered what would become one of the central tenets of his business; whenever possible, own the products you rap about; otherwise, you’re just giving someone else free business.” ZG

Turning Pro – Steven Pressfield

Turning Pro – by Steven Pressfield
Date read: 7/2/19. Recommendation: 7/10.

A solid follow-up to Pressfield’s earlier book, The War of Art. Short, concise, and relevant for any artist or entrepreneur. Highlights the difference between amateurs and professionals, and what it takes to reach the top of your craft. Pressfield discusses shadow careers, the power of concentration, navigating fear, and standing on your own. He also emphasizes that habits are the primary difference between amateurs and professionals. Professionals have better habits that help them simplify life.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Shadow Careers vs. Your Calling

  • Shadow career = metaphor for real career. Shape is similar but entails no real risk. No skin in the game. No consequences.

  • Pressfield’s version was driving trucks instead of writing…took pride in it, felt powerful + manly, the work was interesting, romance of being on the road.

Power of Habits

  • Habits are the primary difference between amateurs and professionals.

  • Professionals have better habits that help them simplify life.

  • “The Zen monk, the artist, the entrepreneur often lead lives so plain they’re practically invisible.” SP

  • Pros face just as much fear, but structure their day to confront and overcome it.

Overcoming Resistance

  • To overcome resistance, you need concentration and depth.

  • If you’re shallow and unfocused, you’ll never make it out.

  • The draw to failure or trouble is so strong because its incapacitating, let’s you off the hook.

  • What you’re must afraid of is what you must do.

Signs of an Amateur

  • Fear dictates decisions (fear of being different or rejected leads to inauthenticity, fear of solitude and silence).

  • Avoid resistance through drama, denial, distraction.

  • To combat this, you need self-awareness.

Signs of a Professional

  • Seek wisdom and instruction from masters without surrendering self-sovereignty.

  • Doesn’t sit around waiting for inspiration, acts in anticipation. Orderly, workmanlike in habits and routine.

  • Trusts and examines the mystery. “The place we write from (or paint from or compose from or innovate from) is far deeper than our personal egos. That place is beyond intellect. It is deeper than rational thought.” SP

  • “The best pages I’ve ever written are pages I can’t remember writing.” SP

Life is a Single Player Game

  • There is no tribe. The artist and the entrepreneur enter the arena alone.

  • “In the hero’s journey, the wanderer returns home after years of exile, struggle, and suffering. He brings a gift for the people. The gift arises from what the hero has seen, what he has endured, what he has learned. But the gift is not that raw material alone. It is the ore refined into gold by the hero / wanderer / artist’s skilled and loving hands.” SP

Real Artists Don't Starve – Jeff Goins

Real Artists Don't Starve – by Jeff Goins
Date read: 6/8/18. Recommendation 7/10.

Practical and refreshing resource for smart creatives and entrepreneurs. Goins picks apart the myths surrounding the Starving Artist and offers an improved alternative of the Thriving Artist. There are dozens of useful rules of thumb you can apply to your own position, no matter where you are in the journey. Thriving Artists build their creative dreams step by step (not overnight). They focus on rearrangement and building upon the work of those who have influenced them (not obsessing over originality). They leverage their existing jobs for resources (not quitting too early and without reason). They recognize the value of a multidisciplinary approach and multiple revenue streams (not mastering a single skill and risking it all on a single bet). Goins follows this same pattern throughout the book, detailing the difference in mindsets, how to position yourself in the market, and how to make a living. It's a modern-day guide for living a better, more creative life, without struggling for the sake of struggling. 

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

 

My Notes:

Adrian Cardenas left MLB to pursue writing. To begin a new journey, he had to let go of what was expected of him.

Before you can create great art, you first have to create yourself.

The reason many of us never self-actualize is because it's easier to play a role in life than it is to become our true selves. It's easier to conform to what people expect than it is to stand out. But this is not the way great art is made, nor is it the way real artists are made.

Eventually, you have to decide who you are. You have to choose your role and own that identity. 

Creative dreams aren't launched overnight They are built gradually.

Study of 5,000 American entrepreneurs
-In the end, the more cautious entrepreneurs ended up being the more successful ones, whereas the risk takers who quit their jobs early were 33 percent more likely to fail.

The creative life is a series of small steps more than any single giant leap.

"Nothing is new except arrangement." -Will Durant

Creativity is not about being original; it's about learning to rearrange what has already been in a way that brings fresh insight to old material. Innovation is really iteration.

The Starving Artist worries about being original, whereas the Thriving Artist knows that stealing from your influences is how you make great art. (but you have to carefully study your influences before you steal)

Rule of Creative Theft: Greatness doesn't come from a single great idea or eureka moment. It comes from borrowing other people's work and building on it. We steal our way to greatness.

Such discipline is all but lost in our world today. We are far too impatient, too eager to show the world what we have to offer, too unwilling to take the time to learn the fundamentals of a craft. 

For generations, writers have done something similar in copying the words of their favorite authors verbatim. Hunter S. Thompson did this with the work of his idol, F. Scott Fitzgerald, when he wrote out the pages of The Great Gatsby to get a feel for "what it was like to write that way."

The marks of a good apprentice are patience, perseverance, and humility. 
-If you put in the work you will eventually see results.
-If you keep going, you will outlast the majority who quit at the first few signs of trouble.
-And always remember how far you still have to go.

The moment we begin to believe we deserve success is the very moment it will elude us.

Opportunities may come and go, but in the end, hard work is all we can measure.

"Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon, his or her advantage is stamina. Whereas disappointment or boredom signals to others that it is time to change trajectory and cut losses, the gritty individual stays the course." –Angela Duckworth

An artist's job is not to be perfect but to be creating.

Jeff Bezos: We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.

Gradatim Ferociter: step by step, ferociously.

Can you stick around long enough to see your work succeed? Do you have enough grit to take a few critical hits and keep going? Or will you get discouraged at the first sign of failure?

If you are going to create work that matters, you are going to need an advocate–a person who sees your potential and believes in your work. This isn't just about money. You need someone to give you a chance, maybe even connect you to the right people.

Any job can be a means to making your art, if you have the right perspective. Employers become patrons when we begin to see them not as obstacles to the work we want to do but as a way of funding it.

One of the most important issues for a member of the Creative Class is location.

You must earn the attention of those already established in the scene. How do you do this? Serve them somehow. Use your gifts and talents to help others succeed.

Put your work where it has the greatest potential to succeed.

Study the people who already are where you want to go.

Rule of the Portfolio: Starving Artists believes she must master a single skill, whereas the Thriving Artist builds a diverse body of work.

In the Renaissance, people embraced this intersection of different disciplines, and those who blended them best were rightly called "masters."

Thriving Artists don't just live off their art. Like good investors, they keep diverse portfolios, relying on multiple income streams to make a living...The challenge, then, is knowing what investments to make and when.

Ability to hold multiple conflicting ideas in tension with each other in a way that they can build upon each other.

Every artist must fight for margin to create.

This is what most of us want: not to get rich off our creations but to have enough time and freedom to create what we want. We want to have the means to focus on what matters to us.

We often live out the stories we've been told, sometimes without questioning the truthfulness of them.

First master the mindset. Then the market. Then the money.