Jay-Z’s literary venture, Decoded, is set to hit bookstores November 16th. The cover, (which also doubles as Hov’s profile pic on Twitter) is an image from Andy Warhol’s 1984 “Rorschach” paintings. Inside, the book will feature illustrations and decode 36 of Jigga’s songs. Accompanying the hardcover edition, Random House plans to release Decoded as an eBook and iPhone/iPad application. Below is an excerpt from Jay on the project.

“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.”