Jay-Z Explains the Evolution of His Lyrical Style

The world has witnessed Jay-Z's lyrical growth since the release of his 1996 debut 'Reasonable Doubt,' and there's a reason for it. In a bonus video that came with the iPhone/iPad app of his memoir 'Decoded,' Hov discusses how he honed his lyrical chops and explained why it all stared with his imagination.

"When I first started writing raps, I was a kid. I didn't have a style. I was nine years old, so I didn't have any life experiences," he explains. "The thing I drew off of was being creative. It was more about the technique than what I was saying. I was trying to say things in different ways, and that's doing faster flows and triplet styles. I was exploring all of that. It was more a technical thing."

The Brooklyn native continued by sharing that his real life experiences led him to elevate his style. "As I started getting out and getting more and more real life experiences and experiencing real emotions and going through things, it starts becoming about the story, less about being technical," he continued.

His lyrics began to reflect the way he experienced growing up in the projects. "Because it became more about the truth of what I was saying, and the emotion. I still had the technical side because I was writing for so many years, just writing and writing and being technical," he said. "I still had that naturally, but it started to slow down a bit because it became more about the words and what I was saying and the emotion."

Watch the insightful clip below.