Laws of AttractionFrom Quanstar's new book, "Water From Turnips", due out soon

I read somewhere that we are sum total of the people of what we have around us. Since the beginning of time, there have been countless books and philosophies developed on this theory. The Bible itself says "As a man thinketh in his heart then so is he" (Proverbs 23:7). More recently, a powerful documentary named "The Secret" talks about this very thing. Whatever the source, this is a true Law.

When I came into this business, I was looking for a break. So naturally, I came across two types of people:

Those looking for breaks
Those looking to take advantage of people looking for breaks

E met Karl through Keuh in between the time that Ant was locked up and we hooked up with 4 Kings. Keuh produced most of the tracks on our first album, Anti-Social, and he is a good friend of ours. Karl was supposedly helping Keuh get some of his tracks to label A&Rs. E told me that Karl liked our music, and that he wanted to talk to us about being signed.

From the time I met him he dropped that game on us. Told us we were hot, he has a meeting with Rawkus and Universal the following week about Keuh and that he wanted to take our shit with him. The no brainer answer was "Hell yeah! Make that shit happen." So he talked about what songs he liked, and asked us where we're recording at. The regular old small talk that usually sets you up for something, but I'm open at this point, so it doesn't matter. We'd just started recording Anti-Social, and we were already about to get signed. The fact that it was Rawkus was the icing on the cake. I was going to be doing songs with Talib, Mos, and Kool G. Rap. We were going to tour the world together, and, you never know, they might get us in with Spikicker and OK Player. By this time next year, we're going to be on the cover of The Source (did I ever tell y'all that I'm hella imaginative). I'm sure he saw what was going through my head, because at that point he dropped that it would be $500.

We kinda came out of the coma, and gave each other a look. So he started gaming us again. "Usually for something like this, niggas will charge up to 5 times of what I'm asking, and they want a percentage and ownership included." We knew that was true. He wanted to get started right away, so we gave him half up front (mistake number one). He didn't have a contract on him, so he was going to run home and get one, then hit us back (mistake number two). He called us later that day to say that he couldn't get the contract to us tonight because he had to fly to Florida for some meetings. But he would get up with us this week when he brought Keuh his contract from Rawkus..

Later that week, E and I had realized that we hadn't heard from Karl so we decided to call him. Obviously he didn't answer, so we left a message. We then called Keuh who said that he talked to him an hour ago, and that Karl was driving in from Macon to bring his Rawkus contract. However, when Karl got here, and showed up at Keuh's house, he told us that he left his briefcase in Macon. This went on for about a month before I realized fully what had just happened. To make a long story, we never got signed, we never got a contract, Keuh never sold any beats to Rawkus, and we lost $250. Doesn't really sound like that much, but that was an 8 hour studio session or a hot track. It was a night on the town, or a round trip plane ticket to Cali.
For about a year, I hoped that I saw that nigga again. He was going to give us our money back one way or the other, and then I was going to put my fist through his grill for wasting my time. Then one day I decided to let it go. People like that always got what was coming to them, and why should I stop moving forward to waste my time on this fool? Life was a lesson, and we'd just learned one: Being hungry and ambitious is different from being desperate and naive. Nothing in this business is typically that easy, and everyone is shady. Stop shooting for the stars. Instead build a rocket ship, and fly there.

I still occasionally see dude around, and far as I know he is still doing the same shit. As a matter of fact, E's brother Vincent, an extremely talented actor all the way up in New York, was about to hire him as his representative a couple of years ago until we stopped that shit. We've moved on to bigger things, and Karl is still doing his same ole hustle.

I could've done the obvious. I could've been soured to the industry, convinced myself that making it in the business was a pipe dream, and that I should forget about all of this up in the air shit and find a "good job." As a matter of fact, I would've done that earlier in my life because failure meant that I wasn't supposed make it. I chose to learn that it was time to get serious though, learn from the incident. No one is going to give it to me, so now it's time to take it piece by piece.

After this Karl incident, I had to rethink our plan of attack. So for about two months I sat back and observed hip hop. I listened to everything that I could get my hands on. I read every trade publication that talked about hip hop. I spent countless hours on the Internet searching for answers. How do we get signed, and be bled by the industry? Then one day it all clicked. We don't. We put our middle fingers up, and do it ourselves, but there is a lot of things that needed to be done before we could just go all out.

First, this was my vision so I had to make it happen. Not saying that E shouldn't have some accountability, but what I want to do is kind of crazy so I shouldn't expect others to completely latch onto it until it starts to work. Even then, though, I shouldn't expect them to take the lead. I'm the one that thought it up, and I should be the one that sees it through.

Second, I needed to figure out where hip hop was going to be in one year, then five years, then ten years; in addition to this, I needed to figure out where we fit within those time limits. Also, I needed to come up with a plan that is based on future industry trends rather than the current ones. It needed to be flexible, cost effective, and easily downsized.

Furthermore, the plan needed to be as independent from outside intervention as possible. I know that at some point we would need some major dough backing us, but I needed to get us as far as I could with what we had before we started bringing "Big Wigs" into our situation.

Third, I decided that I was going to give everything that I had to this plan no matter what. Either I was going to rise or sink with it. I would not abandon the ship if my life depended on it. Happiness was secondary. Comfort doesn't exist. Unless it is my child (which I didn't have at the time) or wife (which I still don't have), it takes a second chair.

Last and definitely the most controversial, my music is my God and I am its Prophet. My rhymes make up my Bible, and my songs are the chapters. People are with me or against me. If you're against me I don't have time for you. If you're with me, I hope you can keep up. Either way, I'll be back for everyone when I get to where I'm headed. For me, this was another cataclysmic moment, because Karl allowed me to realize that wanting a "big break" and not taking charge of my reality was being a victim.