By All Means, Knock The Hustle

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Complex Original

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If you've been reading my #content here on Four Pins, you know I tend to skew gloomy. I like gloomy. Hopefully, you do, too. But this piece is not gloomy. This is some feel good motivational shit or, at least, it's the most optimistic thing I've written in a while. It even has a happy ending, I think! But to get there, kids, we've gotta start here: FUCK YOUR HUSTLE.

If you were passing through junior high in the mid/late '90s or possess cursory awareness of hip-hop, you probably remember "Can't Knock the Hustle" as a Jay Z single. The track, off his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt, is a softly-rapped meander to the casual listener, neither HOV's best, nor his worst. But to a particular cohort of impressionable ears (the ones attached to the heads that, later, would grow up, open Twitter accounts, and turn #riseandgrind into the effortlessly parodied mantra it is today), it was, maybe, anthemic. A statement of resolve, sort of. A statement of being. I hustle, therefore I am. My hustle is not subject to criticism, and neither am I.

Obviously, Jay was not the first person to fetishize perseverance like this. Everyone, from Winston Churchill, to your high school football coach—echoes the infallibility of never giving up. A for effort. Way to work. Stick with it! The sentiment is bred into us from an early age, so this proclamation isn't really about Can't Knock: The Song; it's about Can't Knock: The Ideology. And that proclamation is: Definitely knock the hustle. In fact, fuck the hustle. It's stupid and toxic. The hustle won't save you from an unending plateau of mediocrity. Relentless pursuit of an idea doesn't magically exempt that idea—or you—from criticism. It just anesthetizes you from reality. Having your hustle knocked is the only way to keep your feet on the ground when the floodwaters of failure rise around you.

Now you're probably wondering, "What the fuck does that mean, Dave?" So glad you asked.

From Jay Z and the Nineties, we now speed forward to 2010. How to Make It in America is in its rookie season and many assume it's being groomed as HBO's heir-apparent to Entourage, which is slated to go off-air in 2011. (Full disclosure: I unironically loved How to Make It and unironically hated Entourage. I make no apologies for either opinion, so kindly fuck off into the sun if you disagree.) For all its interwoven plotlines, sexy downtown locations and 2010 youth culture star power—Kid Cudi, acting!—HTMIIA's essence was, intentionally or not, entirely couched inside that aforementioned Jay's track. Just like the song, the show canonizes "the hustle" as self-evidently valid. In other words, unremitting effort is valuable because it's unremitting.

But when you're just hustling for hustling's sake, and personhood becomes indecipherable from personal brand, this is a grave outcome.

Every episode opened with Aloe Blacc's "I Need A Dollar," and featured characters building their personal brands—Rasta Monsta, Crisp Denim, whatever the fuck Kid Cudi's weed service was called, Lake Bell’s stilted editorial career, etc.—by any available means. In at least one instance (probably many, but I haven’t seen it in a few years), the Main Hustle Guys, Ben and Cam, shrug sheepishly before literally delivering Jay's line verbatim: "Can’t knock the hustle." They will make Crisp succeed through sheer force of will! Other characters (and of course, the viewers) will stand in awe of their singular drive! Success is like Survivor. Outwit! Outwork! Outgrind!

How to Make It, as it would turn out, didn't, in fact, make it. HBO axed the show after Season 2. There's meta-fodder within this outcome, certainly. But we've got no time to dissect it. No, we're headed back to the here and now. Jump with me to 2014, where, thanks to disparate socioeconomic factors—mainstream music's relentless appropriation of rap/hip-hop culture, the breathless forward march of The Start Up and lord knows what else—grinding has become its own mythos, meme and raison d'etre. It has spawned its own koans. Not just #riseandgrind, but also #nosleep, “let's build, fam," "lessgeddit," "#nodaysoff" and countless others that rattle around Instagram and Twitter's bowels like campaign road signs for an election that'll never fucking happen. In this model, the hustle isn't a task you do to attain a goal. The hustle is the goal.

Which brings us back to the beginning: knocking the hustle. Most of the time, whether it's a rap song, a television pilot or a T-shirt brand, the idea behind the hustle is really, truly, irrecoverably doomed. And when the idea behind the hustle is doomed, my guys, no amount of work, determined though it may be, can save the idea from complete and utter failure. It's okay to fail when you follow your ideas. That's how life works, as much as I wish it didn't. But when you're just hustling for hustling's sake, and personhood becomes indecipherable from personal brand, this is a grave outcome. My hustle has ended. Therefore I…have ended?

No. Knock the hustle. Forego it. Keep it at arm's length. Be unswayed by its promise of insulation from the shame of failure. Set goals, work hard, come up short and accept that forces beyond your control colluded in your defeat. Sharpen your powers of self-evaluation, pick a better idea to hustle after and try again. Just don't let The Hustle become the thing you hustle for.

Dave Infante is a writer living in New York City. Read more of his work on Thrillist and follow him on Twitter here.

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