This book has been checked out to me since winter and I kept waiting to read it until my brain was ready to absorb all its Michael Eric Dyson-ness. I realized that day might never arrive and decided to go for it. Reading something academic stretched my brain to its limits but this book was the perfect thing to read right now.
Michael Eric Dyson is my hero. He touched on absolutely everything that's everything in a book about Jay-Z that's only 226 pages long. A Professor of Sociology, Dyson has an encyclopedic knowledge of Jay-Z lyrics and their poetic significance and enough knowledge and history of modern hip hop to teach a university course (he does, at Georgetown).
I learned a lot about Jay-Z as a billionaire businessman and how hustle in America is viewed depending on the color and socio-economic status of the hustler. Plus social justice, mass incarceration, Hurricane Katrina, strong black moms including Jay-Z's own, Gloria Carter, Black Lives Matter, Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyoncé, and so much more.
Dyson pulls it all together and creates a portrait of a man who epitomizes the American Dream.