“You better lose yourself in the music, the moment. You own it, you better never let it go. You only get one shot, do not lose your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo.”

That’s Eminem quoted in the first chapter of Make It Happen: The Hip-Hop Generation Guide to Success (Atria, 2005), by Kevin Liles, former president of Def Jam, current executive VP at Warner Music.

Liles has combined lessons learned from his urban upbringing with self-help wisdom to give young people their own Seven-Habits style tome, according to a recent New York Times article. The book chronicles his journey from Def Jam go-fer to president over nine years and has a ten-step style approach that includes chapters like, “Find Your Will,” “Don’t Let Cash Rule,” and “Flex Purpose, Not Power.” He also includes personal anecdotes about famous hip-hop artists like Ludacris, Jay-Z, and Shyne.

This potent, non-preachy blend will likely to appeal to an audience not usually served by the self-help genre: young African-Americans, a community that doesn’t often have their fears, dreams, and ambitions publicly acknowledged and championed. Liles’ aim is to inspire kids to push harder, he told the Times: ’’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.’’’

It’s all a refreshing change from carbon copied-seeming self-help books by carbon-copied authors, chanting the same “help-yourself” mantras over and over. Even if the lessons are familiar here, at least they come in a better rapping.