50 Cent and Robert Greene
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Book Details
Price
|
2.00 |
|---|---|
Pages
| 194 p |
File Size
|
778 KB |
File Type
|
PDF format |
ISBN Adobe Digital Edition
| 978-0-06-195911-0 |
Copyright©
| 2009 by G-Unit Books, Inc and Robert Greene |
I first met 50 Cent in the winter of 2006. He had been a fan of my book The
48 Laws of Power, and he was interested in collaborating on a book project.
In the meeting, we talked about war, terrorism, the music business. What
struck me most was that we had a remarkably similar way of looking at the
world, one that transcended the great differences in our backgrounds. For
instance, in discussing the power games he was experiencing at that time in
the music business, we both looked past people’s benign explanations for
their behavior and tried to figure out what they were really up to. He
developed this way of thinking on the dangerous streets of Southside
Queens where it was a necessary life skill; I came to it by reading a lot of
history and observing the crafty maneuvers of various people in
Hollywood, where I worked for many years. The perspective, however, is the same.
We left the meeting that day with an open-ended idea about a future
project. As I pondered the possible theme of this book over the following
months, I became increasingly intrigued by the idea of bringing our two
worlds together. What excites me about America is its social mobility,
people continually rising from the bottom to the top and altering the
culture in the process. On another level, however, we remain a nation that
lives in social ghettos. Celebrities generally congregate around other
celebrities; academics and intellectuals are cloistered in their worlds;
people like to associate with those of their kind. If we leave these narrow
worlds, it is usually as an observer or tourist of another way of life. What
seemed an interesting possibility here was to ignore our surface differences
as much as possible and collaborate on the level of ideas—illuminating
some truths about human nature that go beyond class or ethnicity.
With an open mind and the idea of figuring out what this book could
be, I hung out with Fifty throughout much of 2007. I was given almost
complete access to his world. I followed him on numerous high-powered
business meetings, sitting quietly in a corner and observing him in action.
One day I witnessed a raucous fistfight in his office between two of his
employees, with Fifty having to personally break it up. I observed a fake
crisis that he manufactured for the press for publicity purposes. I followed
him as he mingled with other stars, friends from the hood, European
royalty, and political figures. I visited his childhood home in Southside
Queens, hung out with his friends from his hustling days, and got a sense
of what it could be like to grow up in that world. And the more I witnessed
him in action on all these fronts, the more it struck me that Fifty was a
walking, living example of the historical figures I had written about in my
three books. He is a master player at power, a kind of hip-hop Napoleon Bonaparte.
While writing about the various power players in history, I developed
the theory that the source of their success could almost always be traced to
one single skill or unique quality that separated them from others. For
Napoleon, it was his remarkable ability to absorb a massive amount of
detail and organize it in his mind. This allowed him to almost always know
more than his rival generals about what was going on. After observing
Fifty and talking to him about his past, I decided that the source of his
power is his utter fearlessness.
This quality does not manifest itself in yelling or obvious intimidation
tactics. Any time Fifty acts that way in public it is pure theater. Behind the
scenes, he is cool and calculating. His lack of fear is displayed in his
attitude and his actions. He has seen and lived through too many dangerous
encounters on the streets to be remotely fazed by anything in the corporate
world. If a deal is not to his liking, he will walk away and not care. If he
needs to play a little rough and dirty with an adversary, he goes at it
without a second thought. He feels supreme confidence in himself. Living
in a world where most people are generally timid and conservative, he
always has the advantage of being willing to do more, to take risks, and to
be unconventional. Coming from an environment in which he never
expected to live past the age of twenty-five, he feels like he has nothing to
lose, and this brings him tremendous power.
The more I thought of this unique strength of his, the more it seemed
inspiring and instructive. I could see myself benefiting from his example
and overcoming my own fears. I decided that fearlessness in all its
varieties would be the subject of the book.
The process for writing The 50th Law was simple. In observing and
talking to Fifty, I noticed certain patterns of behavior and themes that
would eventually turn into the ten chapters of this book. Once I determined
these themes, I discussed them with him, and together we shaped them
further. We talked about overcoming the fear of death, the ability to
embrace chaos and change, the mental alchemy you can effect by thinking
of any adversity as an opportunity for power. We related these ideas to our
own experiences and to the world at large. I then expanded on these
discussions with my own research, combining the example of Fifty with
stories of other people throughout history who have displayed the same fearless quality.
In the end, this is a book about a particular philosophy of life that can
be summed up as follows—your fears are a kind of prison that confines
you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you
will have and the more fully you will live. It is our hope that The 50th Law
will inspire you to discover this power for yourself.
Introduction
SO OVER YOU IS THE GREATEST ENEMY A MAN CAN HAVE AND THAT IS FEAR. I
KNOW SOME OF YOU ARE AFRAID TO LISTEN TO THE TRUTH—YOU HAVE BEEN
RAISED ON FEAR AND LIES. BUT I AM GOING TO PREACH TO YOU THE TRUTH
UNTIL YOU ARE FREE OF THAT FEAR….
—Malcolm X
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1
See Things for What They Are-Intense Realism
Chapter 2
Make Everything Your Own—Self-Reliance
Chapter 3
Turn Shit into Sugar—Opportunism
Chapter 4
Keep Moving—Calculated Momentum
Chapter 5
Know When to Be Bad—Aggression
Chapter 6
Lead from the Front—Authority
Chapter 7
Know Your Environment from the Inside Out—Connection
Chapter 8
Respect the Process—Mastery
Chapter 9
Push Beyond Your Limits—Self-Belief
Chapter 10
Confront Your Mortality—the Sublime
Acknowledgments
Other Books by 50 Cent and Robert Greene
Copyright
About the Publisher
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