Make It Happen The Hip-Hop Generation Guide To A Success

Rule 1: Find Your Will You better lose yourself in the music, the momentYou own it, you better never let it goYou only get one shot, do not lose your chance to blowThis opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo-- Eminem, "Lose Yourself" Willpower starts deep inside you. You can't have ambition without will and the burning passion to do something. Go find your passion.Figure out what you want, and what you're willing to sacrifice to get it. Some people call it a dream, a mission or a vocation. I call it will. Whatever word you choose, the idea is to identify something that takes you outside of yourself and helps you envision your future. Name it and claim it.Everyone has a dream or something they love to do. Whether it's about making it big as a rapper or selling enough insurance policies to afford that dream vacation, if your will is strong enough, it will get you through the hard knocks that might otherwise throw you off the path to success.Tapping into your will can take time. It's an imperfect process of trial and error. Sometimes we think we know what we want because we are trying to live up to other people's expectations. Maybe you're studying accounting because your parents want you to find a steady job, but you hate working with numbers. Maybe you're working as a hairdresser because your mother made a good living at it, but weaving, crimping, cutting and straightening hair is boring you to death.People from our culture don't always get to know what they want because they weren't exposed to the possibilities. They are only thinking they will be a product of their environment. They're too caught up in surviving in the streets, struggling on welfare, or dealing with a father or mother in prison. Kids think if they're going to escape their corners and see the world, they'd better join the army.Their only limitation is that they don't know the game. But awareness can change that.No Guts, No GloryThere's an underground card game we like to play while we're killing time backstage or just hanging out with our homeboys. It's called "Guts."Guts is a street version of poker, but in this game everybody gets dealt three cards. Each player has to put $100 in the pot, so if you've got ten people playing, it's $1,000 at the start of the first round. Once you've been dealt your hand, the dealer calls his game. He can say, "One, two, three, drop." Everyone can either hold their cards up or, if they're not going to stay in, drop them. If you've got guts, if you feel you can win, you hold your cards up to see if you or the others have to match what's in the pot. Calling "guts" helps us flush out the people who aren't real players.The stakes get high, especially when you have a sizeable crew in on the game. One night last year, for example, we had seventeen guys playing Guts at Jay-Z's Manhattan nightclub, 40/40. Jay and his partner in the club, Juan; NBA stars LeBron James and Antoine Walker and their crews; Richard Santulli, founder of the private jet company NetJets; Mike Kyser and Steve Stout, "the Mayor" and marketing wiz of Def Jam respectively, were all in the game. I was the dealer, presiding over a pot that quickly got up to $40,000 just in that first round.As the dealer, I get to hold my cards until the end and I'm the first person to call guts. Once you call it, all the players have to turn their cards up. The best hand wins, and the losers have to match the pot. Of the five people left in that game, Juan won.Sometimes the pot gets so big that people are afraid to keep playing and they drop out. If everyone does that you might get to walk even if you're bluffing. Nobody shows their hand and you can put yours back in the deck without having to pay. But we never let people walk. That's why it usually costs people a minimum of $10,000 just to play one round with us.Wherever we are on the road, me, Jay and the rest of my crLiles, Kevin is the author of 'Make It Happen The Hip-Hop Generation Guide To A Success' with ISBN 9780743497367 and ISBN 0743497368.