Master P

• Born: April 29, 1969, New Orleans, LA
• Active: '90s, 2000s
• Genres: Rap
• Instrument: Vocals, Producer
• Representative Albums: "Ghetto D," "Master P Presents...West Coast Bad Boyz II," "Ice Cream Man"
• Representative Songs: "I Miss My Homies," "Make 'Em Say Ugh," "You Know I'm a Ho"

Biography

Master P created a hip-hop empire without registering on any mainstream radar. For several years, he operated solely in the rap underground, eventually surfacing in the mid-'90s as a recording artist and producer who knew exactly what his audience wanted. And what they wanted was gangsta rap. With his independent label No Limit, Master P gave them gangsta rap at its most basic -- violent, vulgar lyrics, hard-edged beats, whiny synthesizers, and blunted bass. He wasn't a great rapper, nor was anyone on No Limit; occasionally, the No Limit rappers were even talentless and clumsy. But in a time when major labels were running away from the controversy that gangsta rap caused and Dr. Dre, the father of the genre, was proclaiming it dead, Master P stayed on course, delivering album after album of unadulterated gangsta. It was recorded cheaply and packaged cheaply, and almost all of the records on No Limit were interchangeable, but that didn't matter, because Master P kept making money and getting paid.

Appropriately for someone who operated outside of conventional hip-hop circles, Master P (born Percy Miller, circa 1969) didn't come from such traditional rap locales as New York or California. Master P was based in New Orleans, a city with a rich musical tradition that nevertheless had an underdeveloped hip-hop scene. It also had an unspoken violent side that affected Master P as a teenager. After his parents' divorce, he moved between the homes of his father's mother in New Orleans and his mother in Richmond, CA. During his teens, he was on the outside of the drug and hustling culture, but he also pursued a love of basketball. He won a sports scholarship at the University of Houston, but he left the school and moved to Richmond, where he studied business at Oakland's Merritt Junior College. His grandfather died and left him ten thousand dollars in the late '80s, which Master P invested in No Limit Records. Originally, No Limit was a store, not a label.

While working at No Limit, Master P learned that there was a rap audience who loved funky, street-level beats that the major labels weren't providing. Using this knowledge, he decided to turn No Limit into a record label in 1990. The following year, he debuted with Get Away Clean and later had an underground hit with The Ghettos Tryin to Kill Me! in 1994. Around this same time, the compilation West Coast Bad Boyz, which featured rappers Rappin' 4-Tay and E-40 before they were nationally known, was released and spent over half a year on the charts. These latter two albums were significant underground hits and confirmed what Master P suspected -- there was an audience for straight-ahead, unapologetic, funky hardcore rap. He soon moved No Limit to New Orleans and began concentrating on making records.

By the mid-'90s, No Limit had developed its own production team, Beats by the Pound (comprised of Craig B., KLC, and Mo B. Dick), which worked on every one of the label's releases. And there were many releases, hitting a rate of nearly ten a year, all masterminded by Master P and Beats by the Pound. They crafted the sound, often stealing songs outright from contemporary hits. They designed album covers, which had the cheap, garishly colorful and tasteless look of straight-to-video exploitation films. And they worked fast, recording and releasing entire albums in as quickly as two weeks.

Included in that production schedule were Master P's own albums. 99 Ways to Die was released in 1995, and Ice Cream Man appeared the following year. By the time Ghetto Dope was released in the late summer of 1997, Master P had turned No Limit into a mini-empire. He had no exposure on radio or MTV, but No Limit's records sold very well, and Tru -- a group he formed with his younger brothers Silkk the Shocker and C-Murder -- had Top Ten R&B hit albums. His success in the recording industry inspired him to make I'm Bout It, an autobiographical comedy-drama titled after Tru's breakthrough hit. Master P financed the production himself, and when he found no distributor, it went straight to video in the summer of 1997.

His next film, I Got the Hook Up, appeared in theaters during the summer of 1998, concurrent with the release of his album MP da Last Don. In between flirtations with the sports world -- including a tryout with the NBA's Toronto Raptors and negotiating the NFL contract of Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams -- Master P recorded 1999's Only God Can Judge Me. Ghetto Postage and Game Face followed. The double CD Good Side, Bad Side appeared in 2004 and marked P and No Limit's new relationship with the label/distribution company Koch. Both Ghetto Bill and Living Legend: Certified D-Boy arrived a year later. The 2007 compilation Featuring...Master P rounded up some of the rapper's collaborations. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Master P Presents No Limits, Vol.1 Buy this CD	ReMix Classics Buy this CD	ReMix Classics Buy this CD	ReMix Classics [Clean] Buy this CD	Ultimate Master P [Clean] Buy this CD
Ultimate Master P Buy this CD	Ghetto D [Clean] Buy this CD	Ghetto D [Clean] Buy this CD	Ghetto D Buy this CD	Ghetto D Buy this CD

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• Born: Apr 29, 1970
• Occupation: Actor, Director, Writer
• Active: '90s-2000s
• Major Genres: Comedy, Crime
• Career Highlights: Master P's I Got the Hook-Up! Comedy Jam, Still Bout It, Hot Boyz
• First Major Screen Credit: I'm Bout It (1997)

Biography

While he's never achieved the mass-market pop-culture visibility of Dr. Dre or Puff Daddy, in the 1990s Master P quietly became the biggest underground mogul in hip-hop, winning a fervently loyal fan base and building a multimillion-dollar empire (in 1999, Fortune Magazine estimated his worth at 361 million dollars) based on a string of platinum-selling albums dealing with the gritty realities of street life in the Dirty South.

Master P was born Percy Miller in New Orleans, LA, on April 29, 1970. Miller and his four siblings were raised in a housing project in one of the city's most crime-ridden neighborhoods, and after his parents divorced, Miller shuttled back and forth between New Orleans (where he attended high school and lived with his father) and Richmond, CA (where he spent summers with his mother). While Miller was tempted by the lure of the street hustling that was a part of life in inner-city New Orleans, he developed an entrepreneurial streak early on, as well as well as a passion for sports. Miller used his skills as a basketball player to earn a college scholarship to the University of Houston, where he studied business; in time, Miller left Houston and moved back to California, where he continued his studies at Merritt Junior College in Oakland.

In the late 1980s, Miller inherited $10,000 from his grandfather, and used the money to start a record store in Oakland, No Limit Records. Running the store allowed Miller to closely monitor what was selling in the growing hip-hop market, and in 1991 he cut his first album, Get Away Clean, under the name Master P for the tiny In A Minute label. While the first two Master P albums sold negligibly at first, he was quickly learning the rudiments of both the record business and the hardcore rap market, and in 1994, Miller observed that while major labels were shunning hard-edged "gangsta rap" in a desire to avoid controversy, there was still a large and loyal market for street-level hip hop. That year, Master P dropped his third album, the more accomplished The Ghetto's Tryin' to Kill Me!, on his own No Limit Records label. Initially selling the album out of the trunk of his car, Master P avoided mainstream media outlets and instead promoted the album to independent record stores through word of mouth; The Ghetto's Tryin' to Kill Me! and its follow-up EP, 99 Ways to Die, together sold an impressive 250,000 copies without the benefit of national distribution. No Limit Records then signed a distribution deal with Priority Records, and in 1996, Master P's The Ice Cream Man debuted at number three on Billboard's R&B charts, despite receiving practically no mainstream radio or video play. Master P quickly expanded his label, first by releasing the top-selling hip-hop compilation West Coast Bad Boyz, and then by signing his brothers to No Limit, who recorded rough-and-tumble gangsta rap not unlike Master P's, under the names C-Murder and Silkk the Shocker. The three Millers also recorded together under the blanket name TRU, while rappers Mystikal and Mia-X also recorded platinum-plus releases for No Limit.

After No Limit's almost identical sounding releases became mainstays on the hip-hop and R&B charts in the mid-'90s, Master P next set his sights on expanding into filmmaking. In 1997, he wrote a screenplay about New Orleans street life called I'm Bout It, but was unable to interest a studio in the project. Undaunted, Master P financed the project himself, serving as producer, director, and star. When Master P was unable to find a distributor for the feature, he released it himself on home video through No Limit; while reviews were less than enthusiastic, I'm Bout It shocked industry experts by topping the Billboard home video charts, selling over 300,000 copies in its first month of release. Master P's next film, 1998's I Got the Hook-Up (which he wrote, produced, and starred in, but did not direct) attracted the attention of several studios, and received a theatrical release through the Miramax-owned Dimension Films, earning a respectable $10 million gross on a $3.5 million budget. Master P and No Limit next began to take a two-tiered approach to film production, making lower-budgeted direct-to-video films tied into albums by No Limit artists, such as MP Da Last Don and Da Game of Life (the latter starring Snoop Dogg), while spending larger sums on more elaborate projects with at least a token theatrical release in mind, such as the action opus No Tomorrow and the comedy Foolish. Master P also began appearing in other people's screen projects, appearing on the HBO series Oz, playing the recurring role of "Patience" on the sitcom Moesha, and appearing in a supporting role in the film Gone in 60 Seconds.

When not busy with his other projects, Master P remains a passionate sports fan, launching an athlete's management firm and playing professional basketball with the Continental Basketball Association's Fort Wayne Fury and the NBA's Toronto Raptors. He also markets and designs men's clothing. ~ All Movie Guide

Hollywood Homicide Buy this Movie	Scary Movie 3 Buy this Movie	Still Bout It Buy this Movie	Undisputed Buy this Movie
Hip Hop Story: Tha Movie Buy this Movie	Straight from the Streetz, Vol. 1 Buy this Movie	Master P Presents: No Limit Records Video Compilation, Vol. 1 Buy this Movie	Lockdown Buy this Movie

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record company executive; film company executive; rap musician; actor

Personal Information

Born Percy Miller, in New Orleans, Louisiana c. 1970. Married, four children.
Education: two years of junior college in Oakland and New Orleans.

Career

Opened record store, No Limit Records, late 1980s;turned store into record label and produced himself and others, mid 1990s; founded No Limit Film, No Limit Sports Management; owner of other businesses including a Foot Locker franchise, a gas station, travel agency and real estate; played basketball for the Fort Wayne Fury, 1998, tried out for the Charlotte Hornets, 1999; albums and solo releases as solo artist: The Ghetto's Tryin' to Kill Me, 1994, 99 Ways to Die, 1995, Ice Cream Man, 1996, Ghetto D, 1997, MP Da Last Don, 1998; albums as part of the group TRU (with his brothers, rappers Silkk the Shocker and C-Murder): TRU 2 Da Game, TRUE, 1995. Films: I'm `Bout It, 1997, MP Da Last Don, I Got the Hook-Up, 1998, Takedown, 1999, Foolish, 1999.

Life's Work

In one of his songs, "99 Ways to Die," rapper/CEO Master P has this line: "I'm not just your everyday rapper, I'm an entrepreneur." Before the age of 30, Master P has made his mark as a hip-hop recording artist, a movie producer, and the owner of the largest independent record label in the industry, No Limit Records, powerhouse producer of southern-influenced gangsta rap albums. In 1997 Master P earned a reported $56.5 million, and Forbes Magazine placed Master P in the Number Ten spot on its list of the most highly paid entertainers for that year. His ranking placed him just behind the Rolling Stones and ahead of entertainment notables Celine Dion, the Spice Girls, Puff Daddy, and Will Smith in earnings for that year.

No Limit Records is an industry phenomenon. An independent label in an industry dominated by corporate giants, it regularly placed more albums in the top 40 charts than major labels such as Columbia and Capitol. In the spring of 1998, MP Da Last Don, billed as Master P's last album, debuted, and it sold almost 500,000 albums the first week and skyrocketed to the number one position on Billboard's charts. However, it was not the only representative of the label's output: five other albums produced by No Limit Records were on Billboard's top ten list the same month.

From Third Ward to No Limit

Born Percy Miller in New Orleans in 1970, the oldest of five children, Master P grew up in a housing project then called the Calliope Apartments in New Orleans' Third Ward, an area with a reputation for a high crime rate and violence. His parents divorced when he was 11 and his mother moved to California. Though he shuttled back and forth between New Orleans and California, the teenaged Percy settled in New Orleans, attended Booker T. Washington and Warren Eason high schools, and played basketball at both schools. After graduation, he reportedly earned a basketball scholarship to the University of Houston. However, he was sidelined by a leg injury and headed back home rather than sit out the season on the bench. After the death of his brother, Kevin, and with some junior college business courses to his credit, Master P moved to Richmond and opened a small record store, No Limit Records, financing the store with $10,000 that he received as part of a medical malpractice settlement related to the death of his grandfather.

Hip-hop music, although a major commercial presence in the 80s and 90s is at heart a grassroots arts tradition established in the urban streets. So, from the beginning, rap artists have been promoted differently from mainstream artists. An album being promoted by a major label will jockey for playtime at radio stations. If it gets played and listeners like it, they buy it and the album is on its way. Rap music, on the other hand, is promoted directly to its customers by teams of street promoters who hand out postcards, stickers, and sample singles from artists. If the promoters do their job, word gets out, and the records sell even before they get air time. Often in fact, gangsta rap albums are never played on radio stations even after they make the charts because of their raw language; instead, cleaned-up versions of them are prepared for radio air play.

It was this kind of street marketing that Master P followed and that allowed him to turn a small record store into a major record label in a remarkably short time. In 1994, he self-produced his first album, The Ghetto's Tryin' to Kill Me, and sold it out of the trunk of his car in neighborhoods in and around Oakland and also in New Orleans. It became an underground hit, selling a solid 200,000 copies without radio play and turning a profit for the young company. The Chicago Tribune quoted Master P telling an audience of fledgling entrepreneurs at a music business workshop, "Start in your neighborhood and sell your records. Once you start making a buzz, they'll come looking for you. If you can't sell records at home, you cant sell them nowhere."

Used `Hustling' Strategy For Company

Master P's next move was to take the profits from that album and produce two collections of regional rap music: Down South Hustlers, Vol 1 and West Coast Bad Boys, Vol 1. The strategy he employed became a hallmark of Master P and No Limit Records' marketing: highlighting well-known artists along with lesser known artists, giving customers more for their money, like longer play time on albums and two-for-one compilations, centering albums around themes, and producing album covers with striking graphic images. In an article in the Washington Post in 1997, Master P explained, "What I learned in the ghetto is that everybody wants more for their money. If you sell something for $20, they wanna know how can they get $25 worth. And that's what hustling is about. You gotta be able to give your customers more for their money, `cause that's how you're going to keep them coming back to you."

By 1997, the four-year label had a cluster of artists who, while not household names, were well-known to rap fans: people like Mystical, Mia X, Silkk the Shocker (Master P's brother, Zyshonne Miller) and C-Murder (his youngest brother Corey Miller). Without giving up control of the company, Master P struck a deal with distribution company Priority to take over record distribution, allowing him to concentrate on the other aspects of the business.

Master P's next step was to diversify, starting with film production. He produced, directed, and acted in a low-budget semi-autobiographical film called I'm `Bout It, which includes a fictionalized version of his brother Kevin's murder by a drug addict. No one would back the project, so he bankrolled it himself using profits from No Limit. When he could not find any film distributor to handle the film, with its unsophisticated film technique, gritty dialog, and Black urban focus, he added short clips to the beginning and end of the film, labeled it "banned in theaters across America," and released it directly on video. Just as with his first album, he found that he had an underground hit on his hands. The video flew out of video stores. Within five weeks of its release, 200,000 copies sold and the film had risen to 26th place on the video sales chart. Moreover, the soundtrack to I'm Bout it went platinum, an unprecedented event for the soundtrack from a film that was never seen inside a theater.

The following year, in 1998, not surprisingly, there was no problem finding a distributor for No Limit's second film I Got the Hook-Up, a comedy. Dimension Films, a division of Miramax, signed a distribution deal with No Limit. Master P wrote the screenplay, produced it, and played one of the starring roles, a con artist selling cellular phones in South Central Los Angeles. While the film was criticized as introducing a new era of Black exploitation films, it sold tickets. Within months, Master P was on the set of a third film, MP Da Last Don, scheduled to go straight to video. He has signed a deal with the Endeavor agency to help him land starring roles and develop major studio film and TV projects through No Limit. Master P is also scheduled to appear in Takedown and Foolish in 1999.

The financially successful venture into filmmaking demonstrated the business strategy of No Limit Records. Instead of borrowing for a new venture, No Limit takes the profit from one venture to bankroll the next. Ownership is retained, not given away, as in the distribution deal with Dimension Films. As much as possible, the middle man is eliminated. Each new enterprise starts small and builds from there, and everybody works hard. Also, there is cross-promotion: the films promote the albums, and the albums promote the films. Most importantly in every project No Limit has produced, the product reflected what the customers want. Tevester Scott, business manager for the label, stated in an article in The Baltimore Sun, "We have total control, we stay small and we constantly put records and films out. We know what sells in our market because we are our market."

Moved Base To Baton Rouge

Within the next 12 months the entire No Limit company moved operations to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 70 miles from Master P's hometown of New Orleans. At the same time, No Limit undertook a host of new enterprises. In 1997, Master P started a sports management company, No Limit Sports Management, that represented several young NBA players including Ron Mercer of the Boston Celtics and Derek Anderson of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Construction was almost completed on a complex called "The Ice Cream Shop," which planned to include five recording studios, a dorm, a gym, a pool, an aquarium, a sun deck, a movie theater, a domed basketball court, and 15 Hummers for transportation. Businesses incorporated by No Limit Records in Baton Rouge in 1998 totaled 12, including a Foot Locker Franchise, a gas station, a travel agency, a real estate company, and a phone sex service.

The move to Baton Rouge made a statement about the kind of rap music No Limit made: southern-style gangsta rap, a new regional strand of rap outside traditional polarities of West Coast or East Coast rap. The move was also, apparently, a move to a safer environment. Master P, saw Baton Rouge and the South as a safe haven from the violence that gangsta rappers have attracted in Los Angeles. He and five of his associates bought houses in a gated community in an exclusive area of Baton Rouge where former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards was living as well. The Baton Rouge community was apparently less than enthusiastic about the prospect of becoming the center for Southern rap; in fact, the country club refused the applications of No Limit executives to join, citing their association with the entertainment industry as the reason. However, the Baton Rouge community and schools have been the recipients of support from the Master P Foundation, including scholarships, violence-prevention programs, holiday gifts for inner city schoolchildren, and support for the Boy Scouts.

Another significant point that the move to Baton Rouge underscored is the strong ties among the artists and employees attached to No Limit. They call themselves "No Limit Soldiers." The company's logo is a tank with two rappers with machine guns coming out of it. A copy of the logo made out of ceramic and gold tile was installed on the floor of Master P's swimming pool in Baton Rouge. Master P is respected in the industry for helping other artists without exploiting them and for this reason has attracted many to his label. Rapper Mystikal, also from New Orleans, worked to get out of bad contracts he had signed with other record companies so he could sign with No Limit. In 1998, in a headline-grabbing coup, Snoop Doggy Dogg, a major rap star, negotiated a release from his contract with Death Row Records to sign on with No Limit.

Tried Out For The NBA

One of the advantages of being a multi-millionaire is that it allows you to follow your dreams, and Master P's dream, dating back to high school, was to play professional basketball. In 1998, he tried out for the Continental Basketball Association's team, the Fort Wayne Fury, and was signed as a free agent in October. Using his birth name of Percy Miller, he earned $1000 a week and $15 per diem allowance. After playing with the Furies for several months, averaging 1.9 points and 1.6 rebounds in eight games, he was invited to try out for a slot on the National Basketball Association's (NBA) team, the Charlotte Hornets.

In January of 1999 just before the start of a shortened NBA season, word got out that Master P was trying out for the team. Over 15,000 fans crowded the Charlotte Hornets stadium in North Carolina to watch a preseason scrimmage, an event that usually drew a handful of spectators. "I think there were 10 Hornet fans here. The rest were for Master P," Hornets forward Travis Williams was quoted as saying in the South Carolina newspaper, The Herald. Master P did not make the cut, but announced that he planned to continue to work for a berth on a NBA team.

While with the Fury, teammates would tease Master P as he lined up for the $15 per diem allowance with them. As quoted in a New York Times article, his standard response was, "Man, I ain't letting nothing get by me." Watchers in the music business industry, clocking Master P's phenomenal success on multiple tactical fronts, nod their heads in agreement.

Awards

Forbes list of top 10 most highly paid entertainers for 1998; five gold and platinum albums; American Music Awards, Award for Favorite Artist, R&B/Hip-Hop, 1998.

Works

Selected works

• Albums
• The Ghetto's Tryin' To Kill Me, 1994.
• 99 Ways To Die, 1995.
• Ghetto D, 1997.
• MP Da Last Don, 1998.
• Films
• I'm Bout It, 1997.
• I Got The Hookup, 1998.
• MP Da Last Don, 1998.
• Takedown, 1999.
• Foolish, 1999.

Further Reading

Periodicals

• Baltimore Sun, January 10, 1999, p. 1A
• Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1998, sec. 6, p. 1
• The Herald (Rock Hill, South Carolina), January 24, 1999, p. 1
• Newsweek, June 1, 1998, p. 66
• New York Times, November 9, 1998, sec. E, p.1
• Wall Street Journal, June 25, 1998, p.A1
• Washington Post, May 29, 1998, C14

Other

• Information was found on-line at Wall of Sound, http://www.wallofsound.go.com; MTV News, http://www.mtv.com; Fort Wayne Fury http://www.furyhoops.com.

— Rory Donnelly

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