The 50th Law - 50 Cent [51]
Without wasting any more time, he asked a member of his crew named Tony to accompany him that afternoon. Together they surprised Nitty on the street, and while Tony held him, Curtis slashed the kid in the face with a razor blade. He did it just deep enough to send him screaming to the hospital, and to leave a nice scar for a while. Then a few hours later, he and Tony found Wayne’s empty car and shot it up—an ambiguous message that meant either they hoped he was inside, or they were taunting him to come out and attack them in the open.
The following day, the dominoes fell just as Curtis thought they would. Nitty sought out Wayne, expecting that the two of them would then go together to exact revenge on Curtis—after all, Wayne had been attacked as well. Wayne, however, still insisted the kid do it alone. Now Nitty could see through the game—he was just the patsy to do the dirty work, and Wayne was not as tough as he had made himself out to be. Nitty would have nothing more to do with him, but he was also too afraid to take on Curtis by himself. He decided he could live with the scar. Wayne was now in a delicate position. If he asked someone else to do the job it would start to look like what it was—a man too scared to do it himself. Better to let the whole thing just go away.
In the days to come, the hood was abuzz with the story of what had happened. Young Curtis had outmaneuvered and outsmarted the older rival. Unlike the latter, he was unafraid to do the violence himself. What he had done was bold and dramatic—it had come out of nowhere. Every time people would see Nitty on the streets with the long scar on his face, they were reminded of the incident. Rivals would now have to think twice before challenging his status—he showed he was tough and crafty. And those in his crew were duly impressed with his sangfroid and how he had turned the situation around. They now saw him differently, as somebody who could last in this jungle and was worth following.
Curtis followed this up with other similar actions, and slowly he elevated himself above the other hustlers. Now there were younger ones who looked up to him and would soon form the core of a devoted band of disciples who would help him in his transition into music.
After the success of his first album in 2003, Curtis (now known as 50 Cent) began to realize his dream of forging a business empire. But as this took shape in the months and years to follow, he began to feel that something was wrong. It would be natural to believe that with his current position and fame, those working for him would simply follow his lead and do what he wanted. But his whole life had been a lesson in the opposite—people continually take from you; they doubt your powers and challenge you.
In this environment, his executives and managers were not trying to take his money or his life, but rather he had the feeling they were nibbling away at his power, trying to soften his image and make him more corporate and predictable. If he let this go on, he would lose the only quality that made him different—his propensity to take risks and do the unexpected. He might become a safe investment, but he would no longer be a leader and a creative force. In this world, you cannot relax and rest on your name, your past achievements, your title. You have to fight to impose your difference and compel people to follow your lead.
All of these thoughts became painfully clear to him in the summer of 2007. His third album, Curtis, was to be released in September of that year, and everyone seemed to be asleep. The record label, Interscope, was acting as if the album would sell itself. His management team had put together a marketing campaign that he felt was too tame, passive, and corporate. They were trying to control too much. Then one August afternoon, an employee at G-Unit