Master P

New Orleans rap kingpin Master P represents the best and worst of hip-hop's transformation into big business in the '90s. As Percy Miller, who rose from the projects to own and operate one of the country's most successful independent record companies, No Limit, he is a model of rugged individualism and old-fashioned American entrepreneurship. Featured on the cover of Fortune in 1999, he was for years a mainstay in that magazine's annual list of the richest Americans under 40, his worth hovering at around $300 million (just a little above Puff Daddy and a little below Michael Jordan).

But his rise is tainted by his taste. After studying business at a junior college in Oakland, CA, Miller returned to New Orleans inspired by the rawness (and surely the popularity) of West Coast gangsta rap and began a prodigious output of unapologetic thuggery set to basic, street-rocking beats. The endless product issued by No Limit -- besides Master P, there are his younger brothers C-Murder and Silkk the Shocker, and dozens of others -- is often indistinguishable even for die-hard fans. With on-the-cheap production and a formulaic script of West Coast G-funk, Southern bounce, and N'awlins slang, No Limit's releases have less to do with quality and expressiveness than quick, assembly-line mass entertainment. Master P likes to call himself the ghetto Bill Gates, but he's also hip-hop's Roger Corman.

His early albums are fairly rote gangsta rap, distinguished in hindsight by the fact that their outlandish boasts of taking over the world and making shit-loads of money actually turned out to be true. Occasional pleas about being forced into a life of crime by society's neglect -- exploited heavily on the albums by TRU (The Real Untouchables), his group with C-Murder, Silkk, and others -- offer some humanity, but it's nothing that hadn't been said better by N.W.A and Tupac Shakur.

Some lucky occurrences and smart business moves led to No Limit's commercial explosion in the late '90s. The deaths of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G., and the collapse of Death Row Records, left a void in the gangsta marketplace, and aggressive marketing and expansion left No Limit poised to fill it. 99 Ways to Die and Ice Cream Man ("In case y'all wondering what ice cream is/It's anything that you can make profit off of") attempt to do that, but not until the next release did Master P's formula fully come together.

Opening with a step-by-step recipe for making crack, Ghetto D(as in dope) has a strong main plotline of drugs and big money ("Let's Get 'Em," "After Dollars No Cents") supported by moments of maudlin sentimentality ("I Miss My Homies") and raunchy comic relief ("Make 'Em Say Ugh," celebrating P's favorite syllable). All the while, a cast of regulars -- Silkk, Kane and Abel, Fiend, Mia X, it never ends -- hover around the mike like a ghetto Rat Pack. It's a full and self-contained entertainment package, with P at the center and a huge group of marketable sidemen getting exposure for their own thangs: a perfect example of product placement and branding.

MP Da Last Don is a morbid double album that feels like a triple, and Only God Can Judge Me (an outright Tupac rip) is no lighter, opening with a stark, pseudomystical invocation and warning ("To my enemies and the media/To the feds and the IRS/Fuck all y'all"). But both further develop P's music-as-marketing strategy, with CD booklets almost entirely devoted to other No Limit products, from upcoming albums and Master P's clothing and shoe lines to No Limit cell phone service and even the Talking Master P doll. With all this to buy, who cares if you're hearing a lazy Boyz II Men copy called "Goodbye to My Homies" or the fourth rap in a row by Fiend?

Ghetto Postage is a comic delight, with head-nodding Southern grooves and irresistible shout-along hooks delivered in a slang language that is barely understandable. Game Face, made with a new team of producers, is not as manic as previous releases. By 2001 solo albums seem to be just a pie-slice of activity for Master P, and it shows; by 2004, No Limit fortunes apparently reached their limit, as Master P went to an outside label to release Good Side, Bad Side, a bland double album chronicling the rapper's two not-very-different sides.

Of the many No Limit group projects, Master P's role is most significant in TRU and the 504 Boyz. TRU's early albums are mainly notable as the place where P developed his character of the "ice cream man" who likes to bounce, but they also have an angry social conscience absent from his solo releases ("I'm sell 'caine to get my grits because I can't get a job, so/Fuck that shit"). 504 Boyz, founded long after P reached the peak of fame, seems like just another marketing scheme, with a Tupac sound-alike named Krazy and cover artwork that's shoddy even by No Limit standards. (BEN SISARIO)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide