Rapper and mogul Jay-Z is confirmed to perform LIVE on the Oprah Winfrey show on December 14th. I don’t have to tell you how HUGE it is for a rapper to perform on her show. Winfrey, has had a very long standing policy against the rap industry due to their negative use of the N word and the impact with the youth culture. But in October 2009, Winfrey stunned the industry as she sat down for an intimate interview with the rapper to discuss various topics ranging from music, hip-hop culture to poverty in America. And though the two didn’t come to an agreement Jay-Z now counts Winfrey as a close personal friend and someone that has inspired him to reach out more to the youth culture and even inspired him to write his current memoir “Decoded”.

“Oprah was a big reason I wrote this book,” he said. “We had conversations about language and the N word, and while we didn’t agree, we left that conversation with a better understanding.”

At the time of airing, Jay-Z will be touring through Australia with U2 for Live Nation’s continental expansion, as well as reportedly readying his collaborative album with Kanye West, titled Watch The Throne.

Jay-Z held a book reading/signing at the New York Public Library last night (Nov. 15), moderated by Dr. Cornel West and the Director of the “Live” program at the NYPL, Paul Holdengraber. Dubbed “Jay-Z In Conversation With Dr. Cornel West and Paul Holdengraber,” the Brooklyn rapper took the hour-and-a-half session to further break down his lyrics and the inspiration behind them as they appear in his book “Decoded.”

“I’ve said it before, my goal is to make the lions roar. Well, guess what? Tonight my goal is to make the lions rap,” Holdengraber said as he introduced Jay-Z to loud claps from the audience, which included Lupe Fiasco and Harry Belafonte. “It’s a great honor tonight to have Jay-Z… We’re making the books dance and this heavy institution levitate.”

Jay-Z kicked off the conversation by discussing the passage about growing up with music, particularly Michael Jackson, and how when his parents split when he was about 11 or 12, they also split the record collection.

“Our house was like the ‘Good Times’ house — it was the house around the neighborhood that everyone went to because we had all the records and because I had super cool parents,” recalled Jay-Z, adding that his parents had “their names on the individual records to keep tab of who bought what. It filled my house with joy, emotions and feelings. It gave me a wide range of music, too, which is why I have no prejudices today. It was all about good music. Now, on my ipod I have Miles [Davis], Thom Yorke and Ol’ Dirty Bastard.”

Holdengraber admitted when he first picked up the book, he wasn’t sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised.

“I approached the book with a euphoria of ignorance. I wasn’t ready to be bowed over, partly because I grew up listening to various versions of the flute. But, that’s what’s so striking about ‘Decoded,'” he joked, saying that he now believes “Decoded” is one of the top ten books of this decade and that it should have the honor of being archived at the library.

Throughout the discussion, the main message Jay-Z kept stressing was that, at our core, we are all the same, except different circumstances shape our lives.

“At the core, we are all humans. If you take our colors away, we have the same emotions,” he said.

Jay-Z said “Decoded” gives “context” to his life story and the circumstances of his own life and used the Denzel Washington movie “John Q” as an example. He explained how the clip is about a man who takes a hospital emergency room patients hostage out of desperation because his son is ill and needs a new heart.

“If I told you that, you’d say ‘there’s no eason on Earth why anyone should be in there with a gun.’ But given the context, you understand why people make the choices they make.”