Jay-Z --Writes new novel called Decoded....../

Jay-Z Explains he is not the same like in his older days.

Good question. Unlike Eminem and his constantly rehabbing progenitor, Marshall Mathers, there has always seemed to be a lot of harmony between Jay-Z and his real-life alter ego, Shawn Carter, the Marcy-born drug dealer who gave Jay-Z the nerves and the seed money to get his music-biz start. "I never had to reject Shawn Carter to become Jay-Z," the rapper explains, but note the distinction—those two people are not the same. That this is a fact that matters is one of the central revelations of Decoded, which began life as an autobiography, penned with the smart critic Dream Hampton. The bio, once called The Black Book, was scrapped for its too-personal revelations about his father and Carter's years as a career criminal—"It's too much," he told Rolling Stone.

Though Jay-Z spends much of Decoded talking about his career as a drug dealer, there's not much explanation of how or why he extricated himself from that life. Somewhere toward the middle of the book, he zips right past an explanation of how and why he got out, saying "Maryland ended badly, too--shootouts in clubs, major police investigations, whole crews arrested. I got out of there just in time." In fact, one of the main reasons he decided to get out was a failed attempt on his life.

By the early 1990s Jay-Z's hustling career was approaching its peak. He spent much of his time making "business trips" from New York to Maryland and points further south. Rapping was merely a hobby, a dream deferred--when the opportunity arose, he'd appear on songs like "Can I Get Open," recorded with a group called Original Flavor in 1993. But he remained hesitant to devote time and money to music when he knew he could make more as a hustler. It would take more than a nudge to make him change his priorities.

That came suddenly and violently in 1994, when Jay-Z almost had his life taken over a dispute with rival dealers. "He messed with the wrong people," one of his associates told me in an interview for my Jay-Z biography, due out this winter. According to this source, an assassin tracked down Jay-Z in the streets and chased after him, firing three errant shots. When the would-be killer tried to fire a fourth shot, his gun jammed, allowing Jay-Z to escape with his life.

Jay-Z makes note of this incident in his song "Moment of Clarity" on The Black Album, rapping that, "Three shots couldn't touch me / Thank God for that." But in Decoded, all he offers about the lines describing his near-death experience is the following: "This is about not having fear ... even three shots couldn't touch me ... which means I'm untouchable."

The rapper's memoir leaves plenty of questions about his life unanswered.

Jay-Z.com