The 50th Law - 50 Cent [70]
This was the gist of the problem: to be a successful hustler you had to accustom yourself to the slow, grinding pace of the job. But in the hood, the future rarely seemed promising. It was hard for hustlers to imagine saving their money for some rainy day in the future when that day would probably never come. Inevitably the desire for something faster would creep into their blood, and if they gave in, they created a cycle they could never escape. If they were able to get some fast money, it would act like a drug—they would get excited and spend it all on items to impress people. With no money left, they would return to dealing drugs, but now it seemed too slow and boring. They would try again for something fast. They became trapped by their own greed, and as the years went by, they would fail to develop any kind of patience or discipline. They could not manage this up-and-down pace for too long. By the age of twenty-five or thirty they would burn themselves out and have no skills or money to show for their years of work. Their fate after that was generally unpleasant.
To resist this temptation, Curtis decided he would force himself in the opposite direction. He treated hustling as a job. He showed up on the street corner at the same hour every day, working from dawn to dusk. Gradually he accustomed himself to this slow pace. During the long hours with nothing to do, he would contemplate the future and come up with detailed plans of what he would accomplish year by year—ending with his eventual escape from street hustling. He would move into music, and then into business. To take the first step, he would have to save his money. The thought of this goal helped him endure the daily tedium of the job. In these slow hours, he also devised new hustling schemes, with the idea of continually improving himself at this job.
He took up boxing to discipline his mind and body. He was terrible at first, but he was tenacious, training day in and day out, eventually becoming a skilled fighter. This taught him invaluable lessons—he could get whatever he wanted through sheer persistence rather than by violence or force; progressing step-by-step was the only way to succeed in anything. By the age of twenty, he made his break into music—all according to his original plan.
In 1999, after a few years of apprenticing with Jam Master Jay, Curtis (now known as 50 Cent) signed a deal with Columbia Records. It seemed like a dream come true, but as he looked around at the other rappers who had been at the label a little longer, he saw the dangers around him had only increased. The tendency, as he saw it, was to immediately let up in your energy and focus. Rappers would feel that they had arrived, and unconsciously they wouldn’t work as hard and would spend less time learning their craft. That sudden influx of money would go to their heads; they would imagine they had the golden touch and could keep it coming. One hit song or record would make this even worse. Not building something slowly—a career, a future—it would all fall apart within a few years, as younger and more eager rappers would take their place. Their life would be all the more miserable for having once tasted some glory.
To Curtis, the solution was simple: this was a new world he had entered. He had to take his time and learn it well. In the fast environment of hip-hop, he would slow everything down. He avoided the partying and kept mostly to himself. He decided to treat Columbia Records as a university, his one chance to educate himself in the business. He would record his music at night and spend the entire day at the Columbia offices, talking shop to people in every division. Gradually he taught himself more and more about marketing and distribution, and the nuts and bolts of the business. He studied