Jay-Z's New Assouline Book Review - Is it worth $2200?

Jay Z's new book by a lean. Is it worth $2,200?

Welcome to the Syndicate X Library, where we love books. And today we're going to talk about Jay Z's new book. So one of our favorite books here in the library is this Virgil Abloh book done by Aseline, the publisher. And they do these incredible books. I do not know if they are paid to do these books because it seems like a lot of times they'll do a book on specific brands. They wouldn't normally have a book like this. I'm not sure. It might be part of their business model where somebody can come to them and say, hey, will you do a book on Rolex watches? Or will you, you know, Louis Vuitton could go to them and say, hey, we want you to do a series of books. And maybe they fund the creation of it and then split the profits or something, I don't know. But they do come out with some pretty interesting books. We love this one. And so when Jay Z was coming out with.

Book for them, I ordered it a little bit ago, and I know that Jay Z's in the news, but we're gonna live under the premise that you are innocent until proven guilty here in America. And we're gonna check this book out and see, like, do we think it's worth 20, 200 bucks or so.

And I've opened this already, but I will kind of show you guys how it comes. So it comes with a pair of gloves, which most of their books come with gloves. They're not a Syndicate X library gloves, but they're still gloves.

And then it has a.

Bag also. I don't. I don't usually put on gloves, but I'll do it just so you guys can see. So it comes with a. I think this is a tote. Let's see.

The blue on this is incredible. It's this royal blue, which I love. Oh, it's just the oscilline.

On that side and then the Book of Hov, a tribute to Jay Z.

On the other side. And then this box is pretty cool.

So.

You can see the foam here, the indentation of this. This is hard plastic.

On there. So let me see.

It's kind of hard to get out, but.

Thanks, Josh.

So this is the case. And then you can see the book is.

In there.

Nothing on the other side of this, I don't think. Yeah, the other side is blank. So pull the book out.

Once again. The color is beautiful. This is like a leather or synthetic leather. It says OSCILLENE and then Rock Nation. So I am guessing that Roc Nation maybe.

Contributed to the creation of this and probably put up some money.

One. One thing that I noticed. So this is the deluxe version of this book. It isn't signed most of the time. When you get a book from Taschen and it's one of their kind of excels, it is signed by.

The person it's about, you know, like the Ali Goat book we have is signed by Ali.

There's. There's a lot of different people kind of quoted in here, but this does kind of in. I don't know. These globes are terrible. It does kind of seem like, to me, like an advertisement for Jay Z, which. The book is an advertisement for somebody. I get it. But they're looking through it. There isn't a lot of content. In a sense, like his other book.

It kind of plays off like a. Like a trailer.

To him, in a sense. He's quoted in here, but the quotes are more, you know, just dog whistles.

Here's all of his albums in order.

Curious what your guys's favorite album is. Mine would be.

Probably.

Blueprint or the Black Album. Not a Black Album is my favorite. So here's the Businessman section.

But once again, like, this stuff is.

It's kind of like somebody talking about Jay Z, but it's not actually like Jay Z talking about entrepreneurship directly. It's kind of indirectly.

Having other people talk about Jay Z and his thoughts on business, which. I don't know. For a book like this, the.

You know, degree of separation isn't as fun for me. I. I would rather that you had, like, some real ideas in here. Like with the Virgil Abloh book. He has his manifesto. He has a lot of his thoughts and his inspirations in there.

I think that's more my.

My preference on it.

And then you have. You have his.

So Criminal Justice. And then there's also a section in here about.

Sports.

And his Roc Nation. Yeah, the NFL.

But once again, it's somebody else talking about it. It's not Jay Z.

Yeah. So in my opinion, this. This book will not go to the front of the line here in. In the sense that it's just a lot of.

You know, social proof to how cool Jay Z is. But there are. There aren't a lot of lessons in here. It's kind of the. We're celebrating all the victories, but there isn't a lot about the person or the human, especially because the writing in here is somebody else talking about him, which is less human than the actual, you know, Sean Carter, Jay Z, talking about himself in that way. So.

There's a little thing from Obama.

Yeah. So the title is very accurate. The Book of Hov. A Tribute to Jay Z. That's what this book is, is. It's a tribute to him.

Lots of his friends, I think, got together and did this. But as a book collector and somebody who wants to get something from a book, learn something.

And have a little inside, you know, baseball, a little backstage access to people's thoughts and you know, what they've learned and done, this isn't. This isn't for me.

Fortunately, we own it. So it's here and it's a part of the library. But it is not something that I will reference often or given the choice, I probably would have passed on the experience for 2200 bucks, for sure. But thanks for hanging out with us and we'll see you next time here at the Syndicate X Library.