The 50th Law (10 page)

—Niccolò Machiavelli

Keep Moving—Calculated Momentum

IN THE PRESENT THERE IS CONSTANT CHANGE AND SO MUCH WE CANNOT CONTROL. IF YOU TRY TO MICROMANAGE IT ALL, YOU LOSE EVEN GREATER CONTROL IN THE LONG RUN. THE ANSWER IS TO LET GO AND MOVE WITH THE CHAOS THAT PRESENTS ITSELF TO YOU—FROM WITHIN IT, YOU WILL FIND ENDLESS OPPORTUNITIES THAT ELUDE MOST PEOPLE. DON’T GIVE OTHERS THE CHANCE TO PIN YOU DOWN; KEEP MOVING AND CHANGING YOUR APPEARANCES TO FIT THE ENVIRONMENT. IF YOU ENCOUNTER WALLS OR BOUNDARIES, SLIP AROUND THEM. DO NOT LET ANYTHING DISRUPT YOUR FLOW.

The Hustler’s Flow

THE OLD MUSICIANS STAY WHERE THEY ARE AND BECOME LIKE MUSEUM PIECES UNDER GLASS, SAFE, EASY TO UNDERSTAND, PLAYING THAT TIRED OLD SHIT OVER AND OVER AGAIN…. BEBOP WAS ABOUT CHANGE, ABOUT EVOLUTION. IT WASN’T ABOUT STANDING STILL AND BECOMING SAFE. IF ANYBODY WANTS TO KEEP CREATING THEY HAVE TO BE ABOUT CHANGE.

—Miles Davis

When Curtis Jackson first started hustling in the late 1980s, it was a chaotic world that he entered. Crack cocaine had hit the streets and turned everything upside down. Now the corner hustler was unleashed. Moving to wherever there was money to be made, this new breed of drug dealer had to contend with hundreds of scheming rivals, the erratic drug addicts, the old-style gang leaders who were trying to muscle their way back into the business, and the police who swarmed over the area. It was like the Wild West out there—every man for himself, making up his own rules as he went along.

Some couldn’t stand this. They wanted structure, somebody to tell them when to get up and get to work. They didn’t last too long in this new order. Others thrived on all the anarchy and freedom. Curtis was of the latter variety.

Then one day everything changed. An old-style gangster nicknamed “the Godfather” made a play for control over the drug traffic of Southside Queens and he succeeded. He installed his son Jermaine in Curtis’s neighborhood and the son quickly laid down the law—the family was there to bring order to the business. Jermaine would be selling these purple-top capsules for a cheap price. It would be one size fits all—his capsules or nothing. Nobody could compete with his prices, and any hustler that tried to defy him would be intimidated into submission. They were now all working for Jermaine.

Curtis found this hard to accept. He did not like any kind of authority. He kept trying to get around Jermaine’s tight grip on the area by selling his own stuff on the sly, but Jermaine and his team of enforcers kept catching him. Finally they inflicted a good beating on him and he decided it would be wise to surrender—for the time being.

Jermaine liked Curtis’s independent spirit and decided to take the youth under his wing, schooling him on what he was up to. He had done some time in prison and had studied business and economics there. He was going to run the crack-cocaine business according to a model inspired by some of the more successful corporations in America. He aimed for control of the local drug business through cheap prices and a complete monopoly on traffic—that was the evolution of all successful enterprises, even the new ones such as Microsoft. He personally hated all the disorder on the streets—it was bad for business and made him uneasy.

One day he drove by in his red Ferrari and invited Curtis to come along for a ride. He drove to the nearby Baisley Projects, which were controlled back then by the Pharaohs, a gang that was heavily invested in the crack trade and notorious for its violent ways. Curtis watched, with growing discomfort, as Jermaine explained to its leaders his plan for the neighborhood. He couldn’t have freelancers and gangs operating on the margins of his empire; the Pharaohs would have to fall in line as well, but he’d find a way to make it profitable for them.

The man’s arrogance was increasing by the day. Perhaps he would follow this visit up with some violent act to show the Pharaohs he meant what he said, but Curtis had a real bad feeling from that afternoon. Over the next few days, he did whatever he could to avoid running into Jermaine. Sure enough, a week later Jermaine was shot in the head and killed in one of the back alleyways of the hood. Everyone knew who did it and why.

In the months to come, Curtis thought long and hard about what had happened. A part of him had identified with Jermaine. He too had great ambitions and wanted to forge some kind of empire within the hood. With all the competition on the streets, this could never be an easy task. It was natural then for someone like Jermaine to decide that the only way to create this empire was through force and the buildup of a monopoly. But such an effort was futile. Even if he had lasted longer, there were too many people operating on the fringes who resented his takeover and would have done whatever they could to sabotage him. The fiends would have grown tired of his one-size-fits-all approach; they liked variety, even if it was only in the color of the capsules. The police would have taken notice of his large operation and tried to break it up. Jermaine had been living in the past, in ideas cooked up in prison in the 1970s, the grand era of the drug lord. Time had passed him by, and in the ruthless dynamic of the hood, he paid for this with his life.

What was needed was a new skill set, a different mentality for handling the chaos. And Curtis would be the hustler to develop these skills to the maximum. For this purpose, he let go of any desire to dominate an area with one large operation. Instead he started experimenting with four or five hustles at the same time; inevitably one of the angles would work and pay for all the others. He made sure he always had options, room to move in case the police pushed in and cut off one of his access routes. He interacted with the fiends, looking for any changes in their tastes and ways he could appeal to them with some new marketing scheme. He let those who worked for him do things on their own time, as long as they produced results—he wanted as little friction as possible. He never stayed tied to one venture, one partner, or one way of doing things for very long. He kept moving.

The chaos of the streets was part of his flow, something he learned to exploit by working from within it. Operating this way, he slowly accumulated the kind of hustling empire that could surpass what even Jermaine had attempted.

In 2003, Curtis (now known as 50 Cent) found himself thrust into corporate America, working within Interscope Records and dealing with the growing number of businesses that wanted to ally themselves with him. Coming from the streets, with no formal business background, it was natural for him to feel intimidated in this new environment. But within a few months he saw things differently—the new skills he had developed in the hood were more than adequate.

What he noticed about the business executives he dealt with was rather shocking: they operated by these conventions that seemed to have little to do with the incredible changes going on in the business environment. The record industry, for instance, was being destroyed by digital piracy, but the executives could only think of somehow maintaining their monopoly on ownership and distribution; they were incapable of adapting to the changes. They interacted only with themselves—not with their customer base—so their ideas never evolved. They were living in the past, when all of the business models were simple, and control was easy to come by. They had the Jermaine mentality through and through, and in Fifty’s mind they would some day suffer a similar fate.

Fifty would stay true to his street strategies—he would opt for fluid positions and room to move. This meant branching out into ventures that were not at all traditional for a rapper—Vitamin Water, a line of books, an alliance with General Motors and Pontiac. These associations seemed disorderly and random, but it was all tied to his compelling image that he continued to shape. He worked five different angles at the same time; if one venture failed, he learned and moved on. The business world was like a laboratory that he would use for constant experimentation and discovery. He would mix and mingle with his employees, up and down the line, and with his audience, allowing them to alter his ideas. The centerpiece of this flow strategy would be the Internet, a chaotic space with endless opportunity for a hustler like himself.

Without knowing exactly where it would lead, he began putting together his own website. At first it was a place to showcase new videos and get feedback from the public. Soon it began to morph into a social network, bringing together his fans from all over the world. This gave him endless space to market his brand and track the changing moods of his audience. His website would continue to evolve like a living organism—he placed no limits on what it could become.

Years later, having moved beyond music into as many varied realms as possible, Fifty could look back on all the people he had left far behind—the record executives, fellow rappers, and business leaders who had gone astray amid all the rapid fluctuations in the early part of the century, a whole gallery of Jermaine types who had no flow. No matter the changes to come, he would continue to thrive in this new Wild West environment, just as he had on the streets.

The Fearless Approach

50 CENT IS A PERSON I CREATED. SOON IT WILL BE TIME TO DESTROY HIM AND BECOME SOMEBODY ELSE.

—50 Cent

As infants we were surrounded by many things that were unfamiliar and unpredictable—people acting in ways that did not make sense, events that were hard to figure out. This was the source of great anxiety. We wanted the world around us to be more familiar. What was not so predictable became associated in our minds with darkness and chaos, something to dread. Out of this fear, a desire was born deep inside of us to somehow gain greater control over the people and events that eluded our grasp. The only way we knew how to do this was to grab and hold, to push and pull, exerting our will in as direct a manner as possible to get people to do what we wanted. Over the years, this can become a lifelong pattern of behavior—more subtle as an adult, but infantile at heart.

Every individual we come across in life is unique, with his or her own energy, desires, and history. But wanting more control over people, our first impulse is generally to try to push them into conforming to our moods and ideas, into acting in ways that are familiar and comfortable to us. Every circumstance in life is different, but this elicits that old fear of chaos and the unknown. We cannot physically make events more predictable, but we can internally create a feeling of greater control by holding on to certain ideas and beliefs that give us a sense of consistency and order.

This hunger for control, common to all of us, is the root of so many problems in life. Staying true to the same ideas and ways of doing things makes it that much harder for us to adapt to the inevitable changes in life. If we try to dominate a situation with some kind of aggressive action, this becomes our only option. We cannot give in, or adapt, or bide our time—that would mean letting go of our grip, and we fear that. Having such narrow options makes it hard to solve problems. Forcing people to do what we want makes them resentful—inevitably they sabotage us or assert themselves against our will. What we find is that our desire to micromanage the world around us comes with a paradoxical effect—the harder we try to control things in our immediate environment, the more likely we are to lose control in the long run.

Most people tend to think of these forms of direct control as power itself—something that shows strength, consistency, or character. But in fact the opposite is the case. They are forms of power that are infantile and weak, stemming from that deep-rooted fear of change and chaos. Before it is too late you need to convert to a more sophisticated, fearless concept of power—one that emphasizes fluidity.

Life has a particular pace and rhythm, an endless stream of changes that can move slowly or quickly. When you try to stop this flow mentally or physically by holding on to things or people, you fall behind. Your actions become awkward because they are not in relation to present circumstances. It is like moving against a current as opposed to using it to propel you forward.

The first and most important step is to let go of this need to control in such a direct manner. This means that you no longer see change and chaotic moments in life as something to fear, but rather as a source of excitement and opportunity. In a social situation in which you want the ability to influence people, your first move is to bend to their different energies. You see what they bring and you adapt to this, then find a way to divert their energy in your direction. You let go of the past way of doing things and adapt your strategies to the ever-flowing present.

Often what seems like chaos to us is merely a series of events that are new and hard to figure out. You cannot make sense of this apparent disorder if you are reactive and fearful, trying to make everything conform to patterns that exist only in your mind. By absorbing more of these chaotic moments with an open spirit, you can glimpse a pattern, a reason why they are occurring, and how you can exploit them.

As part of this new concept, you are replacing the old stalwart symbols of power—the rock, the oak tree, etc.—with that of water, the element that has the greatest potential force in all of nature. Water can adapt to whatever comes its way, moving around or over any obstacle. It wears away rock over time. This form of power does not mean you simply give in to what life brings you and drift. It means that you channel the flow of events in your direction, letting this add to the force of your actions and giving you powerful momentum.

In places like the hood, the concept of flow is more developed than elsewhere. In such an environment, obstacles are everywhere. Those who live there cannot move and make a good living beyond the confines of the hood. If they try to control too many things and become aggressive, they tend to make their lives harder and shorter. The violence they initiate only comes back at them with equal force.