Ten days ago Kevin Liles, the executive vice president of the Warner Music Group and one of the most powerful African-Americans in the record business, dropped by a television studio in Midtown Manhattan to visit Lil' Kim, one of his company's artists. She was taping a show for Black Entertainment Television, and he needed to tie up some loose ends before she headed off to prison for a year and a day to fulfill her sentence for perjury.
The two conferred quickly before she shooed him away, reminding him that she didn't have a lot of time to spare. "I can't just be telling you I love you all the time," she called after him as he made his way to the door.
Liles, wearing a Zegna blue blazer and baggy Phat Farm jeans, then strolled from the studio entrance toward his chauffeur-driven black BMW 750, where he was accosted by a nervous teenager who handed him a CD of home-recorded raps.
"It happens all the time," Liles said moments later, sinking into the car's gray leather seats. "That's every day." He told the boy he'd give it a listen, even though what he truly wanted to say was that maybe the kid should consider accounting instead.
While other hip-hop impresarios use their clout and credentials to start clothing lines, movie production divisions and vodka brands, Liles has his sights on a different goal: hip-hop self-help guru. And with his first book, Make It Happen: The Hip-Hop Generation Guide to Success (Atria, 2005), written with Samantha Marshall, a business journalist, he hopes to show readers that there are more routes to success than a record contract.
Drawing equally on the lessons of Anthony Robbins and Ludacris and his own rise from intern to Def Jam president by the age of 30, Liles, now 37, argues that hip-hop can be about more than "get rich or die tryin'" in the words of 50 Cent. He says it is in fact a medium -- a worldview even -- that is replete with valuable lessons about honest hard work, discipline and perseverance.
"We've got to push these kids to be more," he said. "I start my motivational speech off saying: `Look, if you come here to be a rapper, I'm not interested in making you a rapper. I'm interested in you owning the record company the rapper raps for. I'm interested in you owning the studio."'
And hip-hop, he says, can be used to help get them there. "I ask people, `Can you be hip-hop in a suit?"' he said. "The answer is yes. Can you be hip-hop and work for an
accounting firm? The answer is yes. Because hip-hop is a spirit: Anything is possible by any means necessary."
Except for drawing heavily from the world of hip-hop for examples of triumph and success, Make It Happen does not offer much that hasn't been said before in the vast literature of personal empowerment.
Much of the book is autobiography, and Liles tries to make the lessons he learned -- for instance, always get to the office before the boss does -- relevant to kids who would not think to pick up a copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In the book Liles breaks down the formulas for his own success into 10 rules, including "embrace the struggle" and "flex purpose, not power," and along the way refers to everyone from Dwight D. Eisenhower (playfully identified as a "dead president") to Biggie Smalls and Donald Trump.
Under the heading "Do You," a section about the importance of self-branding, he writes, "`The Donald' understands the hip-hop way of celebrating his own identity. Without that, he would be just another real estate developer."
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