Owned No Limit Records when the labels said you couldn't. Sold $400m+ in cassettes and CDs out the back of a truck before the internet existed. The original DIY label founder — proof that distribution is more valuable than talent.
Before Spotify. Before iTunes. Before Bandcamp. Master P drove tapes from city to city in the back of a truck and sold them direct to record stores. Cash on delivery. No retainer, no advance, no label percentage. The distribution WAS the business — the music was the product that moved through it.
By 1998 he was doing $200m a year out of New Orleans. Without a single radio favour from the East Coast labels that wouldn't touch him. The trucks proved the thesis: if you control the road to the customer, the gatekeeper becomes irrelevant.
Most labels chase the next big star. Master P signed his brothers and cousins. Silkk the Shocker, C-Murder, Mystikal. People who showed up on time, ate what was put in front of them, and didn't break the budget on day one. Not the hottest talent — the most aligned.
By the time the labels noticed No Limit's hit rate, they couldn't poach the roster — there was nothing to poach. The artists belonged to the family before they belonged to the catalog. Alignment is a moat that money can't break.
No Limit dropped 30+ albums a year at its peak. Some were classics. Most were filler. The economics didn't care. Each release fed the catalog, the brand, the merch line, the touring revenue. When 1 in 5 hit, the misses were already paid for by the system that produced them.
The major labels couldn't compete on volume because their cost-per-release was 10x higher. P built a vertical content factory that made the cost-per-release low enough that misses didn't matter. Output became the moat.
1998: P signs an 85/15 distribution deal with Priority — at the time, the best split ever offered to an independent label. He took the cheque, kept the masters, kept creative control. When Priority later folded, he repurchased his own catalog for pennies on the dollar in 2014.
Sold high. Bought back low. Owned the catalog the whole way through. That's not luck — that's reading the cycle of the industry he was supposedly an outsider to. The "outsider" understood the economics better than the executives who underwrote his deal.