Original subtitles

We start from the ground up

and work our way to the top.

We don't have no limit.

P was like, "Some of us ain't gonna make it."

I have to really change my life.

I was really inspired by Tupac.

Something changed.

He started turning more to our style of music.

I remember him just saying, "You bout it?

"I'm bout it, bout it."

He had the best deal at the time

of any hip hop company in history.

Everyone wanted to be down with Master P,

even Cash Money.

You either with us or you're against us

but you're not gonna stop.

Master P severed ties with me.

It's the trust factor.

People don't trust you with money.

I guess he made his point.

Y'all stay tuned, 'cause No Limit got what you need.

About 1992 Master P settled in Richmond, California.

He'd owned this music store

where he had also started No Limit Records.

No Limit was a family operation.

Sonya C, his wife, was a rapper.

His brothers Silkk and C-Murder, they were rappers.

So Master P started putting out TRU projects,

then his own projects,

and even Sonya C put out a record.

But no one was looking at him like

"Oh man, this guy's got some talent."

His style wasn't the average style in the Bay,

so nobody in the Bay was buying his music.

They didn't respect him.

He was a country rapper to them, you know,

a country bumpkin.

That's what people used to holler.

No Limit definitely wasn't an overnight success.

He and his wife Sonya and their son Romeo

were all living in a poor neighborhood.

It was really a hand-to-mouth type situation at that time.

I'm still chasing my dream

to build the biggest record company in the world,

but at that time, we need money.

When it come to your family you gotta do things

that you might not want to do but you have to do it.

There is bad news, very bad news.

I don't wanna sell drugs,

but I'll probably have to.

Master P had one foot in and one foot out,

both being in the streets and being an artist.

He was always hustling.

Buy a box of tapes and tell 'em

"Man, give me $15 instead of 10,"

you buy tapes and you get a tape and the dope.

The police used to run through there.

You just throw the tapes up, you ain't slinging no dope.

Spread your legs.

We legal, we selling tapes.

Break out some ID, man?

Around that time, Master P, Sonya and little Romeo

moved from Richmond to Oakland, California

on Jackson Street next to Hillcastle.

There was some hustling going on

so basically, you stepped on people's toes.

They want their block back.

So one night, we're selling crack rock.

A brown car rollin' slow up the street.

And by the time we realize it,

there ain't nothing but fire coming from the window.

I can't believe they shot at us.

But guess what? That comes with living that life.

I want to take over the music business

and I can't do that getting in trouble,

people thinking that a fight gonna break out

or a shooting gonna break out.

I gotta give up all this foolishness.

I have to really change my life.

So I stayed focused,

and I ended up running into a big time opportunity.

Pac put out his first record in '91.

Dropped another one in '93.

In between, he had done "Juice."

On the set, the motion picture "Juice."

Fab Five Freddy with one of the stars of the movie, Tupac.

"Juice" catapulted him to the upper echelon in hip hop.

Tupac knowin' that I had a record store,

they had to come see me.

That's how I really got on the roll.

They end up calling me to do a couple shows.

On August 26th, 1993, Master P is the opening act

for Tupac at the Metropolis nightclub in Cleveland.

So the guy introduced me,

he say, "Next up to the stage

is Mister P, the country singer."

I had to pull the man to the side, I said "Bro...

"I'm not no country singer, I'm a rapper.

"You do this shit one more time,

dog, there gonna be problems."

So I gotta struggle with that, but I see one guy bouncing.

I said to myself,

I'm gonna turn that one fan into millions.

I was really inspired by being with Tupac

and I was able to start doing little shows on my own.

I start hitting every market.

I closed the store down.

I'm just out there on my own building my brand.

During that time I was in the mix with No Limit

but by me having my babies,

I just told Percy "I think I need to stay home."

Master P's going from town to town, selling his record.

He put that same dope mentality that you would do

if you're selling drugs into the rap game.

The same rules apply.

You sell a thousand CDs for $10, you made ten grand.

Take that ten grand, you buy 5000 more CDs,

now you got $50,000.

I was in high school when I met Master P.

I started doing logos and drawings for him and photos too.

He would give me tapes to hand out at high school.

People are like, "Who is this?"

He was just on the cusp of blowing up.

One thing I remember about Master P and his apartment.

He was already putting up frames with his records

as if they were popular, but he was thinking

they will eventually be gold, they'll eventually be platinum.

He knew that promotion would lead to sales.

This is my strategy:

when I get to a city, I look for the guys

with the fancy cars and loud radios.

Every drug dealer in every hood

and gave 'em a CD or a cassette tape.

That's the person that's gonna market my music.

I look for homeless people,

I give 'em No Limit tee shirts.

Every city I went to, I had walking billboards.

At one point he wound up going to Houston.

This is the home of the Geto Boys

and Rap-a-Lot Records.

Rap-a-Lot, they were doing it their own way.

"Mind Playing Tricks on Me" sold major records.

Rap-a-Lot Records CEO J Prince,

he was one of the most successful

independent black moguls at that time.

I started Rap-a-Lot Records in 1986.

First time I met P,

I was actually at a club in Houston.

Rolled up in a Rolls Royce.

He had a mink coat on

and I'm like, "Who is this dude?"

He was inquisitive.

He wanted to know how was this being done.

I said, "Man, I'm a record executive.

"I have a distribution deal with Priority Records."

And I'm like, a black man owning a company

and actually making money, that's what I wanna do.

And I think a seed was planted that night.

When I extended my hand it was play everything.

So after I left Houston I end up back in the Bay

and I realized I needed to be strategic like J Prince.

So by late '93, Master P was very committed

to going to that next level.

He goes to Merritt College.

The deeper he was getting into the music

the more knowledge he knew he needed to be able to win.

He just started taking business classes.

So one day, and P sat down.

He said, "We need a manager."

We end up meeting this guy, Tobin Costen.

I was DJing at Gonzaga University,

Everyone was telling me the Bay Area was the place to be

if you were trying to get in the industry and grow.

Bay Area.

So P and I connected at Denny's in Richmond.

As soon as we met,

it was like, man, this is my dude.

This guy got glasses on, he looked like an executive.

Okay, he a front man.

I joined No Limit in 1993 as Master P's business manager.

When I came on board, we always talked about

"We're gonna take over the game."

And the first thing is figure out

how we get better distribution to sell more records.

Saint Charles' Solar Music Group,

he was an independent distributor in the Bay Area.

As far as music, Saint Charles was the plug.

He showed you how to get to the money.

When I met P,

I knew that he had something.

He just didn't have the knowledge

to really jump in this game like it's supposed to be.

P meeting Saint Charles was a pivotal point in his career.

Saint Charles gave him the game.

P soaked it up and used that shit to start

gradually growing independently.

The first project with Master P was

"The Ghettos Trying to Kill Me."

They had this cover.

I think that was oddly one of the first moments

I realized, you know, my dad was a rapper.

"The Ghettos Trying to Kill Me,"

that was my first video.

When I made a video, man it was family.

Silkk was in the video, everybody loved Silkk.

I mean, Sonya was in the video and my sons Steve and Romeo.

Pops is like, "Look, act scared.

Somebody's about to rob the house."

I'm like, "Like, really about to rob the house?"

He's like, "Yeah."

He tricked the hell out of us.

"The Ghettos Trying to Kill Me."

He ends up selling over 100,000 copies.

This is when you realize,

okay this guy's really serious about rap

and we begin to see the future of No Limit.

In 1994, he puts out "The Ghettos Trying to Kill Me."

This ends up being a huge success,

so at this point he is trying to start

expanding his fan base.

P had this idea to take the most popular rappers

in these local hoods all over the Bay Area,

and we put 'em on one compilation,

the "West Coast Bad Boyz."

We had Rappin 4-Tay.

JT the Bigga Figga.

If I'm hot in my particular town

and you're hot in your town and we're on the same record,

I've just doubled my fan base.

With all those artists that was from different hoods

on the same record, it was a game changer.

Man, that shit took off like wildfire.

It sold about 320,000 albums independently.

The West Coast Bad Boyz gave us the money

to make the "99 Ways to Die" album.

I was selling "99 Ways to Die" to a distributor in Oakland.

That's when he happens to run into Dave Weiner

who's an executive from Priority Records.

I was West Coast sales manager at Priority Records.

I was in the parking lot and caught Master P's attention.

He just bee-lined towards me

and he was like "Man, what are you doing here?"

I found out he was a record executive.

He handed me the "99 Ways to Die" CD.

I said, "Look, listen to this."

He presented what he's gonna do

and what he's gonna charge,

and then just kind of went away.

I got in the car and I listened to "99 Ways to Die"

and then a week went by.

He charted within, I believe, one chart position,

and at that point I went to the two owners of Priority

and said "Hey, I need to talk to you about this situation

I'm seeing up in the Bay Area."

With "99 Ways to Die" P knew he had something.

He was positioning himself as a boss in the Bay,

but then he saw what was happening in the South.

You know, at that time you had Outkast and Goodie Mob

and the dirty South was emerging as the third coast.

I had did a West Coast Bad Boyz project

and I said you know what, take that game, let's blow up

all these Southern rappers and let the world know

No Limit is ready to take over the South.

We had come up with the idea we're gonna do an album called

"The Down South Hustlers."

If we have a South sound and a West Coast sound,

nobody at that point would be able to stop us.

So the number one focus was,

how do we acquire talent down South?

I started going back home to New Orleans.

Bounce was already big.

Bounce music came into play in 1991

with MC T Tucker and my brother, DJ Irv.

Bounce is early rudimentary hip hop

mixed with that Miami bass.

It took over the city and Mia was one of

the hottest bounce music artists in New Orleans.

I loved hip hop more than I loved anything,

and in '92 I did my first bounce record, "Da Payback."

"Payback" man, it was hot.

It was all over the radio and mix show.

It was eight minutes of battle bars

and party travel music.

Everybody had heard of Mia, she was rocking the house,

killing New Orleans.

Her delivery, her presence,

her sass, everything was like right on point.

But one record's not gonna cut it.

I had to provide for two babies now.

At the time Latifah and Salt 'N Pepa,

they were selling really good.

...Raps!

I knew I could do it.

Everybody start telling me about Mia X.

I was like, "Man, take me to her, let me holler at her."

Well, I was working in a record store.

He came in, he was looking for a female artist,

and the guys that I worked with they was like,

"Well Mia rap, Mia rap," you know.

I went up and talked to her and told her what I was doing.

He said, "I just wanted to see if you'd be interested

"in working with me, because I'm gonna have

the biggest label in the world."

I didn't know who he was,

but for some reason I was like,

I think he gonna do something.

So he was like, "Well, let's go to California."

And it was like, bam, Mama I'll see you in a minute.

I'm going to California.

The next piece of it was Serv-On.

Damn near everybody want to be a rapper, but everybody can't.

Now, I knew I was better than so many in New Orleans

but the labels wouldn't pay attention to me

till KLC really took me under his wing

and then we made my demo.

KLC was a producer on the rise in New Orleans.

KL really had, like, this signature sound.

So KL and Serv-On started making hard, good tracks.

KL and I, every time we got a break

something would go wrong.

I submitted demos and I had a lot of doors

shut in my face, and I mean,

I had to resort to street life.

One night my mom told me, "Don't come home."

Some serious people in the house

at 5:00 in the morning looking for me.

You know, most rappers from here die.

They get murdered, and so I called P.

P is like a big brother to me.

I always come back into Cali to play ball.

We was always tight so when stuff wasn't working for me,

he was like "I got this record label, No Limit."

He called me up, so I said, "All right.

"If I can help you with something,

you know, let's figure it out."

And I told him what was going on.

He was like "Just stay alive till in the morning.

Your plane ticket'll be there at the airport."

We went out to California, and the first thing he did

he had jackets already made with No Limit Records

on the back, my name stitched in it.

And we had a talk about loyalty and respect

and about being there, and it's gonna blow up.

And that's why I knew No Limit was for me.

In early 1995, we got to the studio

with some producers from the Bay Area.

And I wasn't feeling it,

'cause I wanted the bass of the South.

I told P, "Look, we gotta get KL up here and fast."

With me and Mia, if KL don't come

we can't do this with you.

I was like, "Okay, let's do it."

He flew KL to California

and he went straight to the studio.

So KLC eventually ends up bringing in

several other producers.

Craig B, Mo B Dick,

Odell, and later on, Carlos Stevens.

And together they become Beats by the Pound.

What Beats by the Pound did for Master P

was give him that authentic New Orleans sound.

P got an apartment for me, Serv, Mo B, and KL.

We called our house "Three... and a Broad."

They became my real brothers.

That's when things really started taking a shape

because C would be there, Silkk would be there.

P would be there, KL would be playing bass.

We'd freestyle and coming up with things

in that apartment we created, right there.

That's when KL did "Bout it."

"Bout it" changed the game for No Limit.

We were in the studio and KL made the beat for "Bout it."

Master P came to the studio and KL played it

and he just was sitting there looking.

It was just one of them defining moments.

He was like, "Man, I need to get that."

You could see in his eyes.

Came up with the hook and I knew that

"Bout it, Bout it" was a hit.

And I remember him just saying, "You 'bout it?

I'm 'bout it, 'bout it."

"Bout It, Bout It," that's the shot heard round the world.

The whole thing was just authentic.

I remember the "Bout it, Bout it" video

and it's just like a concert in the middle of the projects.

And it introduces a new artist by the name of Mia X.

The music was infectious.

No matter where you were from, you felt it.

"Bout It, Bout It" was like a gangster-ass South song

that just made you and your crew feel like

y'all could just go take on anybody.

This thing is catching on, getting bigger and bigger.

On a national level, "I'm Bout It" was really

the foundation of making Master P

and No Limit Records stars.

So many record executives wanted to be down with Master P.

Jimmy Iovine, is that how it's pronounced?

Iovine.

By early 1995

Jimmy Iovine at Interscope,

he's really interested in Master P.

At the time Interscope with Death Row

had the biggest artists in the world.

The red on red? Don't you like the red on red Interscope?

Jimmy Iovine, he said, "Man, I'm gonna

write you a check for a million dollars."

My job, what I'm really looking for, was the potential.

I get the contract, bam, seven year deal.

Couldn't use my name,

and I'm like, "Man, I'm gonna go

get something to eat and I'm gonna come back."

He said, "Well, if you don't come back

"you'll never get a deal in this town."

I end up not coming back.

If you're a young black male

making those kind of moves,

navigating this industry, that was a huge play.

That's rolling the dice,

but that's also extreme confidence

and knowing what your brand and your product is.

That white man offered me a million dollars

and he don't know me. How much you think I'm worth?

If he offered us a million we're worth 100 million.

They ain't gonna offer you that if you got something.

He just let us know what we got now.

Master P realized, if I don't know what I'm doing,

you can lose money in this game real quick.

So he sought knowledge of the record industry

from people who knew what they were talking about.

He was like, "I wanna own my own shit.

"I wanna own my own masters, everything.

What do I gotta do to do that?"

P went to go see

Michael Jackson's lawyer

and the guy wanted $25,000 to come sit with him.

I gave him the 25,000.

He was like, "Look, if you want some money,

"you want a distribution deal where you get 85%

and the record company get 15%."

I said, "I want a distribution deal."

And because of Dave Weiner

Priority came at the right time.

By the mid 1990s

Priority Records had had a tremendous amount of success.

They had Ruthless Records, which was Eazy-E and N.W.A.

And Ice Cube of course was huge.

But what Priority didn't have in 1995 was

a steady stream or a new pipeline of artists.

Dave was really into Master P

and what I heard I liked, so what I was gonna do,

I was give him everything we gave everyone else.

Most artists come in and get 10% or 20% deals.

We were interested in Master P as a businessman

and a record label owner,

and the few artists he had around him.

We were all seeing really how this was building

so we set up some formal type meetings and he came to L.A.

He comes in and he's a tall guy,

he's got a tee shirt on, a baseball cap, backwards.

He was the tallest rapper I'd ever seen.

He said, "Man, you know we wanna give you a record deal."

And I'm like, "Look man, I want a distribution deal.

I want a 85/15 deal."

No one had done a deal like this before.

But Master P,

he was like absolutely non-negotiable.

They gave me a deal, the rest was history.

It was 85/15 and then we went back.

We needed $250,000 advance for some records

and then it went to 80/20.

Okay, you own your masters, you own all the music.

You're basically paying us a 20% fee

to get it into record stores,

and you have to do everything else,

marketing and promotions.

I think he had the best deal at the time

of any black-owned record company in history.

Master P, I mean goddam,

that is not how an artist thinks.

That's how a business person thinks.

So in 1995 Master P signs a 80/20 deal with Priority.

$15 per CD, and 80% of that going into his pocket.

It starts adding up really fast.

When you're your own label,

it gives you the freedom to control every move you make,

versus being, you know, at the mercy of the majors.

While Master P was on top

in the Bay, back in New Orleans

Cash Money Records, they were getting a lot of love.

They had BG, Lil Wayne,

U.N.L.V., Mannie Fresh and Juvie.

New Orleans to the end.

Cash Money was amongst the hottest labels in the city.

Cash Money was already

a successful independent enterprise,

but what Cash Money didn't have was national distribution.

Cash Money owners Birdman and Slim

reach out to Master P to see if they can

get artists on their label distributed through his label.

'95, '96, we sat down with those guys

at some restaurant in New Orleans.

It was Baby Slim, myself and P,

and we talked to them about utilizing

our relationship with Priority

and our distribution and funneling through.

But P, he had a different idea.

Baby was his own dude, like, he had his own vision.

That never would have worked with No Limit.

So we left it at that.

It was nothing else after that, you know?

We kept it moving.

Meanwhile, back in the Bay Area, a lot of drama ensued.

Master P's 80/20 distribution deal

creates huge tension for No Limit.

Guys felt like they weren't getting the money

and Master P did.

There were rumblings around finances.

All the artists would come to me upset with P

but kind of afraid of P, and it's the trust factor.

People don't trust you with money.

I believe the Priority deal

broke up the Northern California faction.

Master P, he kept on saying he owned all the masters.

You know, mean didn't nobody have no other part in it.

After we signed the deal with Priority

we had to work for the guys in the Bay.

They wasn't putting out no records

so they couldn't get paid.

Next thing you know we had a little situation

which caused Master P, Tobin and King George to split.

I have a lack of trust for him,

he's got a lack of trust for me.

It was tough for me to leave

but I was kind of frustrated with things,

and then at that time I had a couple different labels

who wanted to do some other projects.

Tobin came to us, and to Mia and to KL and,

"Hey, we got this and we're gonna do this and we..."

We were like, "We ain't up here for that."

The word goes out that Tobin and I

are planning on getting a side deal with Priority.

Tobin starts telling them

he can do his own thing, he didn't need me,

so I was like, "Man, well good luck to you and all,

'cause I'm gonna keep doing what I gotta do."

That's when I knew, it was over.

When Master P severed ties with me

that broke my heart, man.

That shit broke my heart.

You know, I had a lot of love for King,

but at the same time he couldn't see

the bigger picture of what I was doing.

Master P, he said, "I want everybody to know.

"King George is no longer with No Limit Records."

I always had your back and you gonna leave me for dead.

That hurt me, man...

No Limit is what I created, TRU is what I created.

I opened my arms to people to join my movement.

So now if I see you and you not doing

the same thing I'm doing, I'm gonna cut you off.

That's just what men do,

so if you don't like it that's on you.

That was one of, you know,

the defining moments to all of us.

P sat us down, me, C, Silkk, Mia, Mo B, KL.

All of us up there from New Orleans.

P was like, "I wanna see who here with me."

And he was just like, "Man, we gotta hang in there together

"'cause some of us ain't gonna make it.

"Might be in jail, might be dead.

"You know, might be just jealously walking off.

We just gotta keep our focus and do what we have to do."

We in a tough situation

but let's make the best out of it.

This is No Limit. We have to move on.

When I was in the Bay, a lot of those guys

didn't believe in me, even the guys that was around me,

that was with me, they couldn't see my vision.

Everybody that doubted, they was out of my life.

The people that believed started coming together.

You either with us or you're against us.

But you're not gonna stop us.

That's what that "Ice Cream Man" album was about.

April '96, "The Ice Cream Man" drops.

Another shot heard around the world.

That "Ice Cream man" was done in a weekend, completed.

"Mister Ice Cream Man," that shit was fly as...

I sold dope so all the drug dealers in songs

that were relevant to selling drugs,

I always had a radar for that.

Well everybody wanna taste some ice cream.

In the hood, the ice cream man

served another kind of white other than vanilla.

And he married those themes together,

and made a smash hit.

I think that identity that resonated with

all the street guys in the hood, they were our core audience.

It was infectious.

Come check this out. He's a hit twice.

This is only just the beginning.

It was like a wave that just came from New Orleans

all the way over to the East Coast,

up North, the whole bit. Everybody was in.

I know y'all, y'all got this "Ice Cream Man" album

'cause it's straight up ice cream, 31 flavors.

Silkk, that's my brother, you know what I'm saying?

C-Murder, that's my brother.

We all one big family.

It's all about getting paid and a nice feeling.

In '96 when "Ice Cream Man" dropped,

we were all pretty shocked 'cause it did really well.

And we were flying. We were doing unbelievable.

People were buying the record,

buying the record, buying the record.

I was happy we were going gold and then it went platinum.

"The Ice Cream Man" becomes his first project

to go platinum.

When "Ice Cream Man" went platinum,

P wasn't shocked because he put the work in.

He was making a fist load of money.

It was unbelievable.

He started getting checks for like a million, 750.

Most times, he put 200,000, 300,000 in my account.

I was scared to death. Man, we going to jail.

But he like, "Man, shut up and come on."

Despite his newfound success, Master P,

he really wanted to get some coverage

in a hip hop trade magazine called "4080."

"4080" magazine was very influential

and important for the independent hustle movement.

The "Ice Cream Man" album had so much success that

Master P thought he should be able to get a solo cover.

I was the editor of "4080" magazine.

I remember it came down to Master P and Busta Rhymes.

Put ya hands up in here!

As the story goes, P got on the phone

one day with the publisher.

P was adamant that he needed to have a cover

by himself on the magazine.

To emphasize his point...

P shot a gun into the air.

And so Master P got his first solo cover.

I guess he made his point.

Come on man, don't believe that, man.

The "4080" liked me, man.

At that time P was changing.

You know, he started taking chances.

He goes from just being a solo artist

to running a label with a brilliant strategic plan.

At that particular time P had a roster

of artists from New Orleans,

with Mia X representing for the ladies.

She had released "Good Girl Gone Bad"

and that's early stages of the signature No Limit sound.

They also have Skull Duggery.

Down South.

Kane and Abel. Mr. Abel.

And? Mr. Kane.

And then P's brothers, obviously, C-Murder and Silkk.

I put my first record out, "The Shocker."

That why I named my album "The Shocker"

'cause I knew everybody was underestimating me.

"Shocker" word do you. For sure.

You know what I'm saying, I had to, dog.

I just had momentum, it was like,

put him out now.

P did the math.

If I just put out a bunch of records

and I take 80% every time, that's gonna add up.

We saw how much money we making off of one album,

we could make an album every month.

Look how much more money we could get down the road.

I don't think Priority understood

what was about to happen.

Working at Priority, every Wednesday there'd be

an executive meeting and we'd go in there

and talk about the projects that were on the table.

So I'm sitting in this corporate meeting.

They're telling me everything I can't do.

Me and P are the only two brothers in there, right?

Out of nowhere... I said,

"Man you think you white, you right."

Y'all think white is right,

and that ain't the... case here.

Man, you know what, this is my company.

I can put out how many records I want to put out.

This is our shit and we own it,

and this what the... We gonna do.

Come on, buyers, get the... up outta here.

And that's how we left 'em. We walked out,

closed the door, I hugged that...

I told him, "Boy, that's the most powerful shit

I ever seen before in my life."

And after that they got in line.

Oh man, I'm gonna tell you like this here

when you see a No Limit project

from the cassette to the CD to the tape

we control all that, it's mine, I own this here.

And at that point he said

"Where's my... office? You don't think

I... deserve an office, bruh?"

Ya heard me, ya heard me?

He brought up a good point, so we got him

a corner office in the CNN building.

Got a pool table in there.

P is reaping the rewards.

He buys a house in Beverly Hills.

But even though P is making moves,

it didn't come without contention.

I get a phone call and it's Suge Knight.

He said, "Man, you know, California ain't big enough."

Suge told P, "Welcome to L.A. but there ain't enough room

for both of us in L.A." P told him...

When you moving?

No Limit Records is in the house.

This was the height of No Limit's power.

Nobody touched us back then.

Roll in and chill right there,

boom, he coming with us.

I told Snoop we're the biggest company in the world now.

There's a whole No Limit dog eat dog world.

I was like okay, he's my kind of...

But he was out still with Suge.

Death Row, these dudes do not play.

We've got guns, who cares?

I'm a boss. I need to talk to the boss.

Subtitles Diego Moraes(oakislandtk) www.opensubtitles.org