The 50th Law (12 page)

Early in his career, the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman used this more tyrannical approach in dealing with his actors, but he began to be dissatisfied with its results and so decided to experiment with something different. He would sketch out the script for a film, leaving the dialog mostly open. He would then invite his actors to bring their own energy and experiences into the mix, shaping the dialog to fit their emotional responses. This would make the screenplay come alive from within, and sometimes it would require rewriting parts of the plot. In working with the actors on this level, Bergman would enter their spirit, mirroring their energy as a way to get them to relax and open up. He allowed for this more and more as his career evolved, and the results were astonishing.

The actors came to love this, feeling more involved and engaged; they wanted to work with him, and their enthusiasm carried over into their performances, each one better than the last. His films had the feel of something much more lifelike and engaging than those structured around some rigid script. His work became increasingly popular as he went further with this collaborative process.

This should be your model in any venture that involves groups of people. You provide the framework, based on your knowledge and expertise, but you allow room for this project to be shaped by those involved in it. They are motivated and creative, helping to give the project more flow and force. You are not going too far in this process; you set the overall direction and tone. You are simply letting go of that fearful need to make people do exactly as you desire. In the long run, you will find that your ability to gently divert people’s energy in your direction gives you a wider range of control over the shape and result of the project.

CULTURAL FLOW

In the 1940s, the great saxophone player Charlie Parker single-handedly revolutionized the world of jazz with his invention of the style known as bebop. But he watched it soon become the convention in jazz, and within a few years he was no longer the revolutionary figure worshipped by hipsters. Younger artists emerged who took his inventions to other levels. This was immensely disturbing to him and he spiraled downward, dying at an early age.

The trumpeter Miles Davis had been a part of Parker’s ensemble and he personally witnessed this decline. Davis understood the situation at its core—jazz was an incredibly fluid form of music that underwent tremendous changes in style in short periods of time. Because America did not honor or take care of its black musicians, the ones who found themselves surpassed by a new trend had to suffer a terrible fate, like Parker. Davis vowed to overcome this dynamic. His solution was to never settle on one style. Every four years or so, he would radically reinvent his sound. His audiences would have to catch up with the changes, and most often they did.

It soon became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as he was seen as someone who had his finger on the latest trend, and his new sound would be studied and emulated. As part of this strategy, he would always hire the youngest generation of performers to work with him, harnessing the creativity that comes with youth. In this way, he developed a kind of steady momentum that carried him past the usual decline in a jazz musician’s career. He kept this inventiveness up for over thirty years, something unheard of in the genre.

Understand: you exist in a particular cultural moment, with its own flow and style. When you are young you are more sensitive to these fluctuations in taste and so you generally keep up with the present. But as you get older the tendency is for you to become locked in a style that is dead, one that you associate with your youth and its excitement. If enough time passes, your style-lock can become quite ludicrous; you look like a museum piece. Your momentum will grind to a halt as people come to categorize you in a narrow period of time.

Instead you must find a way to periodically reinvent yourself. You are not trying to mimic the latest trend—that will make you look equally ludicrous. You are simply rediscovering that youthful attentiveness to what is happening around you and incorporating what you like into a newer spirit. You are taking pleasure in shaping your personality, wearing a new mask. The only thing you really have to fear is becoming a social and cultural relic.

Reversal of Perspective

In Western culture, we tend to associate strength of character with consistency. People who shift around too much with their ideas and image can be judged as untrustworthy and even demonic. We honor those who are true to the past and certain timeless values. On the other hand, people who challenge and change the prevailing conventions are often viewed as destructive figures, at least while they are alive.

The great Florentine writer Niccolò Machiavelli saw these values of consistency and order as products of a fearful culture and something that should be reversed. In his view, it is precisely our fixed nature, our tendency to hold to one line of action or thought, that is the source of human misery and incompetence. A leader can come to power through acts of boldness, but when the times shift and require something more cautious, he generally will continue with his bold approach. He is not strong enough to adapt; he is a prisoner of his fixed nature. What raised him above others then becomes the source of his downfall.

True figures of power, as Machiavelli saw it, would be people who could shape their own character, call up the qualities that were necessary for the moment, and know how to bend to circumstance. Those who remain true to some idea or value without self-examination often prove to be the worst tyrants in life. They make others conform to dead concepts. They are negative forces, holding back the change that is necessary for any culture to evolve and prosper.

This is how you must operate: you actively work to overcome this fixed nature, deliberately trying a different approach and style than your usual one, to get a sense of a different possibility. You come to view periods of stability and order with mistrust. Something isn’t moving in your life and in your mind. On the other hand, moments of change and apparent chaos are what you thrive on—they make your mind and spirit jump to life. If you reach such a point, you have tremendous power. You have nothing to fear from moments of transition. You welcome, even create them. Whenever you feel rooted and established in place, that is when you should be truly afraid.

PEOPLE WISH TO BE SETTLED; ONLY AS FAR AS THEY ARE UNSETTLED IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR THEM.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Know When to Be Bad—Aggression

YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND YOURSELF AMONG THE AGGRESSIVE AND THE PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE WHO SEEK TO HARM YOU IN SOME WAY. YOU MUST GET OVER ANY GENERAL FEARS YOU HAVE OF CONFRONTING PEOPLE OR YOU WILL FIND IT EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO ASSERT YOURSELF IN THE FACE OF THOSE WHO ARE MORE CUNNING AND RUTHLESS. BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE YOU MUST MASTER THE ART OF KNOWING WHEN AND HOW TO BE BAD—USING DECEPTION, MANIPULATION, AND OUTRIGHT FORCE AT THE APPROPRIATE MOMENTS. EVERYONE OPERATES WITH A FLEXIBLE MORALITY WHEN IT COMES TO THEIR SELF-INTEREST—YOU ARE SIMPLY MAKING THIS MORE CONSCIOUS AND EFFECTIVE.

The Hustler’s Setup

[T]HE HUSTLER’S EVERY WAKING HOUR IS LIVED WITH BOTH THE PRACTICAL AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS KNOWLEDGE THAT IF HE EVER RELAXES, IF HE EVER SLOWS DOWN, THE OTHER HUNGRY, RESTLESS FOXES, FERRETS, WOLVES, AND VULTURES OUT THERE WITH HIM WON’T HESITATE TO MAKE HIM THEIR PREY
.

—Malcolm X

In the summer of 1994, Curtis Jackson returned to Southside Queens after having served some time in a rehabilitation program for drug offenders. And to his surprise, in the year he had been away the hustling game had dramatically changed. The streets were now more crowded than ever with dealers trying to make some money in the crack-cocaine trade. Having grown weary over the heated rivalries and violence of the past eight years, the hustlers had settled into a system where each would have his own corner or two; the drug fiends would come to them for quick transactions. It was easy and predictable for everyone. No need to fight or push people out of the way or even move around.

When Curtis spread the word that he was looking to get his old crew together and start back where he had left off before rehab, he was met with suspicion and outright hostility. He could ruin the nice system they had in place with his ambitious hustling schemes. He had the feeling they would kill him before he could do anything, just to preserve this new order.

The future suddenly seemed depressing and grim. He had decided months before to find a way out of the drug-dealing racket, but his plans depended on his ability to make some good money and save it so he could segue into a music career. Fitting into this one-corner system would mean he could never earn enough. A few years would go by and he would find it harder and harder to get out. But if he made a play to grab more turf and make some quick money, he would find few allies and many enemies among his fellow hustlers. It was not in their interest that he be allowed to expand his business.

The more Curtis pondered the situation, the angrier he became. It seemed to him that everywhere he turned, people were trying to get in his way, restrain his ambitions, or tell him what to do. They pretended they were trying to keep order, when in fact it was just about getting power for themselves and holding on to it. In his experience, whenever he wanted something in life, he couldn’t afford to be nice and submissive; he had to get active and forceful. It would be natural for him to feel a little skittish, coming fresh out of jail and trying to get his old life back together, but what he really had to be afraid of was being stuck and settling for the corner hustler’s life. Now was exactly the time to get aggressive, to be bad, and to disrupt this system that was designed only to keep people like him down.

He thought back to the great hustlers he had known in the neighborhood. One of their most successful strategies was the “setup,” a variation on the old con game of bait and switch. You distract people with something dramatic and emotional, and while they are not paying attention to you, you grab what you want. He had seen it executed dozens of times, and as he thought about it, he realized he had the material for the perfect distraction.

While in rehab he had befriended the ringleader of a gang of Brooklyn stickup artists. They were notorious for their efficiency and intimidating presence. For the setup, Curtis would lay low for a few weeks, working a corner like everyone else and appearing to go along with the new system. He would then hire these stickup artists on the sly to rob all of the neighborhood hustlers—including Curtis himself—of their jewelry, money, and drugs. They would make several sweeps of the area over the course of a few weeks. As part of the deal, they would keep the money and jewelry from the robberies; Curtis would get the drugs. Nobody would suspect his involvement.

In the weeks to come he watched with amusement as the sudden appearance of the stickup artists in his neighborhood caused panic among the hustlers, some of whom were his friends. He pretended to share their distress. These Brooklyn gangstas were not to be messed with. Almost overnight, the dealers’ whole way of life was disrupted: they were forced now to carry guns for protection, but this created a new set of problems. The police were everywhere, making random checks, and to be caught loitering with a gun would mean solid prison time. The hustlers could no longer simply stand on the street corner and wait for the drug fiends to come to them. They had to keep in constant motion to avoid the police; for some, getting called on their beepers was the only way to arrange a deal. Everything became more complicated and business slowed down.

The old model, tight and static, had been exploded, and now Curtis moved into the breach with some new-colored capsules he packaged and sold to the fiends. Sometimes he included in the sales some free capsules, which happened to be the drugs he had accumulated from the robberies. The fiends began to flock to him, while the other hustlers were too upset to notice the trick that had been played. By the time they had figured it out, it was too late. Curtis had expanded his business and he was well on his way to buying his freedom.

Several years later, Curtis (now known as 50 Cent) had carved out a path towards a career as a rapper. He had a deal with Columbia Records and the future looked reasonably bright. But Fifty was not one to be duped by the usual dreams. He quickly saw that there was only so much room for the top performers who could bank on a solid career in this business. He, along with everyone else, was fighting for crumbs of attention; the artists might get temporary success with a hit here or there, but it wouldn’t last, and they had no power to alter the dynamic. What was worse, Fifty had made some enemies in the business—he was an ambitious hustler with talent. There were people who mistrusted and feared him. They worked behind the scenes to make sure he would not get far in the industry.

As Fifty had learned, talent and good intentions are never enough in this world; you need to be fearless and strategic. When you face people’s indifference or outright hostility you have to get aggressive and push them out of your way by any means necessary, and not worry about some people disliking you. In this case he looked for any opportunity to make such a bold move, and one evening a chance encounter provided this for him.

At a club in Manhattan, Fifty was talking with a friend from the neighborhood when he saw the rapper Ja Rule staring in his direction. Several weeks before, Fifty’s friend had robbed Ja Rule of some jewelry in broad daylight; Fifty expected Ja to come over and cause some trouble. Instead he looked away and decided to ignore them. This was rather shocking. Ja Rule was then one of the hottest rappers in the business; he had built his reputation on being a gangsta from Southside Queens, his lyrics reflecting his tough-guy image. He and his record label, Murder Inc., had allied themselves with Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff, former head of the Supreme Team, a gang that had dominated the New York drug business in the 1980s with its ruthless tactics. Supreme gave them street credibility, and Murder Inc. gave Supreme an entrée into the music business, something legitimate to distance himself from his dark past.