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Rapper, Music Producer (1970)

NAME
Master P
OCCUPATION
Rapper, Music Producer
BIRTH DATE
April 29, 1970 (age 44)
EDUCATION
University of Houston, Warren Easton High School, Merritt Junior College
PLACE OF BIRTH
New Orleans, Louisiana
ORIGINALLY
Percy Miller
ZODIAC SIGN
Taurus
SYNOPSIS
YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR
RECORD LABEL
BUSINESS EMPIRE
NEW DIRECTIONS
CITE THIS PAGE
Master P is a rapper and hip-hop mogul who founded No Limit Records.
FAMOUS TAUREANS
FAMOUS PEOPLE BORN IN NEW ORLEANS
FAMOUS PEOPLE BORN IN UNITED STATES
FAMOUS PEOPLE BORN ON APRIL 29





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Master P (aka Percy Miller) was born on April 29, 1970 in New Orleans. He used money
from a malpractice settlement to open No Limit Records, a store which became a label. His
artists crowded the hip-hop charts in the late 90s and Master P expanded his empire into film,
sports management, and socially conscious rap. In 1998, Forbes ranked him 10th on its list of
highest-grossing entertainers.
Rapper and hip-hop mogul Master P was born Percy Miller on April 29, 1970, in New
Orleans, Louisiana. His parents divorced when he was very young, and Miller and his four
siblings were raised by their father in New Orleans' Calliope Projects, a neighborhood
infamous for its high crime rate. "We had a house full of people and an empty refrigerator,"
Master P recalls.
"I was so hungry that my stomach was literally cramping." He says that the turning point in
his childhood came at age 16, when he saw a former resident of the Calliope Projects, who
had left to become an insurance salesman, return to the neighborhood in a Mercedes-Benz.
Determined to become a legitimate businessman, Master P began his first entrepreneurial
venture as a high-school senior, selling early-model cell phones throughout New Orleans.
"No one in my family could find a job at the time," he remembers. "I couldn't find one either,
so I created my own."
Master P attended Warren Easton High School in New Orleans, starring as a point guard on
the basketball team. After graduating in 1987, he briefly enrolled at the University of
Houston to play basketball. However, he dropped out just months into his freshman year and
transferred to Merritt Junior College in Oakland, California. He was studying business at
Merritt when his grandfather passed away, and Master P received $10,000 as part of a
malpractice settlement awarded his family due to the circumstances of the death. Armed with
nothing but the settlement money and two years of business classes, Master P opened his own
record store, No Limit Records, in nearby Richmond, California.
Master P used his record store to scope out sales trends in the hip-hop industry. After
perceiving an unfulfilled demand for more hard-edged gangster rap music, he expanded No
Limit into a record label and self-produced his own debut album, Get Away Clean, in 1991.
Neither Get Away Clean nor Master P's 1992 release, Mama's Bad Boy, sold well, and he
decided to move No Limit Records back to his hometown of New Orleans.
There Master P achieved his first real success with the 1994 album, The Ghettos Tryin' to Kill
Me, and its 1995 follow-up, 99 Ways to Die. Operating without a national distribution deal,
Master P promoted the albums via word-of-mouth to independent music stores, managing to
sell some 250,000 copies.
Spurred on by the success of these early releases, Master P signed a distribution contract with
Priority Records in 1996. He released his next album,Ice Cream Man, later that year and it
peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard album charts. For the next several years, No Limit Records
dominated the hip-hop industry, churning out a slew of hit records.
By 1997, No Limit Records had expanded to include a bevy of prominent hip-hop stars,
including C-Murder, Silkk the Shocker, Mia X and Snoop Dogg. During its most productive
years (1997-99), No Limit released 46 albums that frequently crowded the top of the
Billboard charts. Asked to explain this massive outpouring of music, Master P answered, "It's
a business to me. I'm in it to make money. It's work. It's how I get paid."
Master P capitalized on the success of No Limit Records to expand into a host of other
ventures. He explained his business model: "You spread out because you never know when
it's going to end. Business is like a seesaw going up and down. When one goes down, I have
the other one going up. You have to think like that if you want to survive."
Master P's first new enterprise was No Limit Films. In 1997, he personally funded and
produced a low-budget docudrama called I'm Bout It, earning an enormous profit when the
film proved a surprise hit. This success landed No Limit Films a national distribution deal
with Miramax.
In another surprising extension of his entertainment empire, Master P founded No Limit
Sports Management in 1997. His marquee client was running back Ricky Williams, a highly
touted University of Texas football star drafted by Master P's hometown New Orleans Saints
in 1999. Represented by No Limit, Williams signed an incentive-laden contract worth far less
than his market value.
The contract was harshly criticized by other sports management agencies, with one agent
calling it "a mockery of the business." As many predicted, Williams failed to achieve his
most lucrative incentives and fired No Limit in favor of new representation.
At the same time as he entered the sports management business, Master P also plunged into
the pro sports world as a basketball player. In 1998, he publicly announced his goal of
playing in the NBA. As a first stepping-stone, he joined the Fort Wayne Fury, a team in the
minor-league Continental Basketball Association. He later earned tryouts with the NBA's
Charlotte Hornets and Toronto Raptors, greatly exceeding most expectations but ultimately
failing to land on an NBA roster.
Despite these setbacks, at the close of the 1990s Master P sat atop a self-made entertainment
empire of grand scale. No Limit Records sold 75 million albums during the decade, and in
1998 Forbes magazine ranked Master P 10th on its list of highest-grossing entertainers,
estimating his annual income at $57 million. Rapper and friend Ice Cube called Master P
"one of the best businessmen I've ever run across," and record executive Tony Draper
declared him "a young successful black C.E.O. who has the intelligence to take the rap
business to the next level."
But in the early years of the 21st century, Master P suddenly reversed the course of his
career, abandoning gangster rap in favor of social activism. He says that his son, Percy
Romeo Miller Jr., born in 1989 and known by the stage name Romeo, inspired his sudden
career turnabout. Master P remembers driving with his son one afternoon when one of his
own songs came over the car stereo, and he felt compelled to turn down the volume so that
his son would not hear the inappropriate lyrics.
"I make so much money off of hip-hop that, you know, I was once the part of the problem,"
he says. "And now, I want to be a part of the solution." In 2007, Master P and Romeo co-
founded a new record label, Take a Stand Records, to promote hip-hop music with no
profanity and a positive message. Master P has also established a series of P. Miller Youth
Centers to counsel and educate underprivileged youth in cities throughout America. He
released his first book, Guaranteed Success When You Never Give Up, in 2007.
To describe a life that has seen him change from impoverished child, to gangster rap hero, to
entertainment mogul, to urban youth activist, the metaphor Master P prefers is that of a
soldier. "I'll fight," he says. "I would die for this: it's all I've got. If I don't have this, I'm going
back to the ghetto. And I don't want to go back because I didn't want to be there in the first
place.''
We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!
Master P. (2014). The Biography.com website. Retrieved 12:27, May 16, 2014, fromhttp://www.biography.com/people/master-p-597332.
Master P. [Internet]. 2014. The Biography.com website. Available from:http://www.biography.com/people/master-p-597332 [Accessed 16
May 2014].
"Master P." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 16 May 2014.

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