The 50th Law - 50 Cent [80]
The Hustler’s Ambition
LET ME POINT OUT TO YOU THAT FREEDOM IS NOT SOMETHING THAT ANYBODY CAN BE GIVEN; FREEDOM IS SOMETHING PEOPLE TAKE AND PEOPLE ARE AS FREE AS THE WANT TO BE.
—James Baldwin
Curtis Jackson’s mother, Sabrina, had one powerful ambition in her life—to somehow make enough money to move her and her son far away from the hood. She had had Curtis when she was fifteen, and the only reasonable outlet at that age for making any good money was dealing drugs. It was a particularly dangerous life for a female hustler, and so she built up an intimidating presence to protect herself. She was tougher and more fearless than many of the male dealers. Her only soft spot was her son—she wanted a different fate for him than hustling. To shelter him from the life she led, she had him stay with her parents in Southside Queens. As often as possible, she would show up with presents for the boy and to keep an eye on him. Some day soon they would move to a better place.
As part of a drug beef, Sabrina was murdered at the age of twenty-three, and from that moment on, it looked like Curtis’s fate in this world had been sealed. He was now essentially alone—no parents or real mentor to give him a sense of direction. It seemed almost certain that the following scenario would play itself out: He would drift towards life on the streets. To prove his toughness, he would eventually have to resort to violence and crime. He would find his way into the prison system, and he would probably return for several stints. His life would basically be confined to this neighborhood, and as he got older he could turn to drugs or alcohol to see him through, or at best a series of menial jobs. All the statistics on parentless children growing up in such an environment pointed towards this limited and bleak future.
And yet in his mind something much different was taking shape. With his mother gone, he spent more and more time alone and began to indulge himself in fantasies that carried him far beyond his neighborhood. He saw himself as a leader of some sort, perhaps in business or in war. He visualized in great detail the places where he would live, the cars he would drive, the outside world he would some day explore. It was a life of freedom and possibility. But these were not mere fantasies—they were real; they were destined to happen. He could see them clearly. Most important, he felt that his mother was looking after him—her energy and ambition were inside him now.
Oddly enough, he would follow in her footsteps with the same plan—to hustle and get out of the game. To avoid her fate he forged an intense belief that nothing could stop him—not a gunshot, the schemes of other hustlers, or the police. These streets would not confine him.
In May of 2000, Curtis (now known as 50 Cent) somehow survived the nine bullets that a hired assassin had pumped into his body. The timing of the attack had been particularly poignant—after years of hustling on the streets and in music, his first album had been about to come out. But then in the aftermath of the shooting, Columbia Records canceled the album and dropped him from the label. He would have to start all over. In the months to come, as he lay in bed recovering from his wounds, he began to reconstruct himself mentally, much as he had done after the murder of his mother. He saw in his mind, in even fresher detail than ever, the path he would now have to take. He would conquer the rap world with a mix-tape campaign the likes of which no one had ever seen before. It would come from his intense energy, his persistence, the even tougher sound he would create, and the image he would now project of an indestructible gangsta.
Within a year of the shooting, he was on his way to making this vision a reality. His first songs hit the streets and created a sensation. As he progressed on this path, however, he saw one very large impediment still blocking his path: the assassins were looking to finish the job and they could show up at any moment. Fifty was forced to keep a low profile