Master P was born Percy Robert Miller in New Orleans, LA on April 29, 1969. After his parents' divorce in, he moved between the homes of his father's mother in New Orleans, and his mother in Richmond, CA. During his teens, he was heavy into the street life and the drugs, violence, and hustling that came with it. However, he also loved basketball. He won a basketball echolarship to the University of Houston, but soon dropped out and moved back to Richmond and enrolled in a business course at Oakland, CA's Merritt Junior College.
In 1989, Master P's grandfather died and left him with ten thousand dollars, which P used to start a record store, No Limit Records, in Richmond, CA. Being the owner of a record store, Master P recognized the strong desire for the underground raw gangster rap that major labels just refused to provide. This knowledge motivated Maste rP to turn No Limit into a record label in 1990. In '91, he released his first CD, "Get Away Clean" and went on to release "Mama's Bad Boy" in '92. Seeing the immense success of these albums, he decided to become serious about rapping.
Master P's first big seller was "The Ghetto's Trying to Kill Me" in 1994. It sold over 100,000 units which was an unheard of amount for an independant album. Realizing that Richmond, CA wasn't the best place for his style, he moved back to New Orleans, LA.
By the mid '90s, No Limit had assembled it's own production team, Beats by the Pound. Made up of Craig B, KLC, and Mo B. Dick, they worked on every single one of the label's released. They designed a new never seen before breed of colorful album covers which was unique to No Limit releases. You could tell a No Limit CD just by it's cover, as seen below.
New Orleans loved P, his next CD in '95, "99 Ways to Die" was also a huge hit, and sold over 200,000 copies, and his CD "Ice Cream Man" hit streets the following year. By the time the controversial drug-influenced CD "Ghetto D" was released in the summer of 1997, Master P had built his own recording empire. He had taken over all of Louisiana and made it famous for it's hot sounds and paved the way for new Louisiana rappers. He had no radio play, no TV play, but still managed to sell astonishing amounts of CDs. Master P along with TRU, a group consisting of Master P and his brothers Silkk and C-Murder, had Top Ten R&B hit albums. His success thus far inspired him to release "I'm Bout It", a movie inspired by one of TRU's hits. Master P financed the production himself, and when no one would distribute it, it went straight to video in the summer of '97. After this, he came out with the film "I Got The Hook Up" which premiered in movie theaters in the summer of 1998, the same time of his release of the CD "Da Last Don" in which Master P claimed to be retiring and "leaving the rap game".
After taking a break from the rap game, Master P did a basketball stint with the NBA's Toronto Raptors, and also negotiated the NFL contract of Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams.
Despite taking a break from the game, Master P came back in 1999 with "Only God Can Judge Me". However, Master P was back with a new style. A cleaner less raw style, made more for national exposure as opposed to staying true to his ghetto Louisiana roots. Many old fans disliked this new style, and were very unimpressed by it. P lost many of his old fans who had been with him from day 1 through this release. After this CD, "Ghetto Postage" and "Game Face" followed. The double CD "Good Side, Bad Side" appeared in 2004 and signaled Master P and No Limit's new relationship with distribution company Koch. "Ghetto Bill" arrived less than a year later followed by "Ghetto Bill V.2" and a couple remix CDs.
None of P's "new style" CDs ever reached the success level of his old true-to-the-streets style, and some argue that it was career suicide.
