Annals of Power

The first law of power, as set forth (or down) by Robert Greene in his 1998 book, "The 48 Laws of Power," is "Never outshine the master." Thou shalt not upstage the boss, the benefactor, the mentor, or the talent, whose good graces bestow clout upon thee and whose ego must therefore be stroked. Greene illustrates each of his laws with historical instances of transgression and observance, and for the first one the exemplars are, respectively, Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV's finance minister, who threw such extravagant parties that the King had him imprisoned for life, and Galileo, who was clever enough not only to discover Jupiter's moons but to name them after the Medicis. "Do not fool yourself into thinking that life has changed much," Greene writes. Every trading desk, district office, or shop floor has its Sun King. You just need to figure out who it is.

This first law has achieved special resonance in the hip-hop community, which has adopted Greene's book as a hallowed text, and Greene himself as a kind of sage. Rappers and executives frequently cite other statutes as models for their industry maneuverings (Law 15: "Crush your enemy totally"; Law 21: "Play a sucker to catch a sucker"), but the first law's invocation of hierarchy seems to suit the image that rappers and their handlers have of themselves and their line--that they are knights who must abide by a code. Greene is their Capellanus.

Six years ago, the rapper Busta Rhymes was working on the film "Halloween: Resurrection," the eighth in the series. His acting coach gave him a special copy of "The 48 Laws" as a gift, with his name inscribed on the cover. One of the production executives had been making what some in the cast and crew considered unreasonable demands, and it occurred to Busta Rhymes, as he consulted the book in his trailer, that, as he recalled recently, "the way you had to approach him, when you were objecting to something he was saying, was to make it like he was always right. Bingo: 'Never outshine the master.' " In time, "Halloween" was indeed resurrected, and thirty million dollars were grossed. (At least one master--John Carpenter, the director of the first "Halloween"--was not outshone.) By then, Rhymes had come to feel that almost every situation in his life had a power law that suited it. For example, a friend recommended him to a casting agent for a role in "Shaft," and, when Rhymes got a part and the friend did not, the friend surreptitiously tried to sabotage him. "Instead of reacting as I would've, I just kept cool," Rhymes told me. "I showed my appreciation. I am now an enemy of this person, but he doesn't know it. I know where that person's malicious energy lies. I get to use this person like a puppet on a string." (Law 2: "Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies.") Meanwhile, Law 10 ("Avoid the unhappy and unlucky") encouraged him to jettison other friends--the criminally inclined, say. "This friend brings his dirt in from the street and gets it in your shit," Rhymes observed. Loyalty, it turned out, was overrated. For a time, he sensed that he had esoteric knowledge, a competitive edge: "I felt like I had some Deep Sea scroll or some shit."

About the same time, the book began to make the rounds at Def Jam Records, circulating first among the managerial class, before filtering up (or down) to the artists. Chris Lighty, who manages Busta Rhymes and 50 Cent, and who might therefore be inclined to refer to each of them, publicly at least, as his master, still bestows that honor on his old Def Jam mentor Lyor Cohen, another early adopter. When Lighty first came across the book, he joked that Cohen had written it--that Robert Greene didn't exist.

Greene does exist, although perhaps not in the state of diabolical radiance that his admirers sometimes imagine. They instruct their people to arrange meetings with Mr. Greene, and they end up encountering an understated, somewhat geeky guy whose implementation of his own teachings is, if anything, very subtle. Whether by design or by nature, his reserve comes off as self-possession, and his reputation remains undiminished. "He's the Jedi master, that's for sure," Lighty says.

Greene is forty-seven years old and lives in Los Angeles. He began writing "The 48 Laws" in the mid-nineties, after having held, by his count, eighty jobs, none of which brought him any power, except that which accrues from observation and experience. The book has sold more than eight hundred thousand copies in the U.S. and another million worldwide, and has been translated into twenty languages (including Latvian and Arabic but not French). It is in some ways just an exhaustive collation of the work of other sages, such as Machiavelli and Sun Tzu--whose "Art of War" was espoused by Hollywood and hip-hop, too. But its frank and ruthless approach, and its easy digest of admonishments--some innocuous ("Always say less than necessary"; "Keep your hands clean") and some less so ("Pose as a friend, work as a spy"; "Keep others in suspended terror")--make it seem like some kind of gospel. The design is stately, with great-man quotes in the margins, in red ink. Greene would say that the laws are not so much pieces of advice as they are observations of behavior--the fruit of research, if not quite revelation. "If the world is like a giant scheming court and we are trapped inside it, there is no use in trying to opt out of the game," Greene writes. "That will only render you powerless, and powerlessness will make you miserable."

Greene's next two books, "The Art of Seduction," a lush guide to inveigling, published in 2001 (the marginalia are lavender-hued), and "The 33 Strategies of War," a concordance of tactical thinking, published last winter, sold well, too. Not surprisingly, some people find all the books sinister or upsetting, in that they basically tell you how to be a creep, albeit a happy and successful one. But Greene's way of seeing the world--play or be played--has earned him a ragtag apostolate, which includes the T-shirt magnate Dov Charney (who says of Greene, "I call him Jesus"), the Knicks guard Stephon Marbury (his copy of "The 48 Laws" came from a friend of his brother's, who encountered it in prison; "It's an inspiration from somewhere else," Marbury told me), and the producer Brian Grazer ("There was a time Mike Ovitz was one of my agents, and I didn't understand him, but when I saw this book I began to understand how he used power"), as well as rappers like Kanye West.