Actor enterpreneur filmmaker investor rapper author record producer
Master P was born on April 29, 1970 to his parents Josie and Percy Miller. 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.
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. As a student-athlete at the University of Houston, he studied Business Communications. 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 created a hip-hop empire without registering on any mainstream radar. For several years, he operated solely in the rap underground, eventually surfacing in the mid-'90s as a recording artist and producer who knew exactly what his audience wanted. And what they wanted was gangsta rap. With his independent label No Limit, Master P gave them gangsta rap at its most basic -- violent, vulgar lyrics, hard-edged beats, whiny synthesizers, and blunted bass. He wasn't a great rapper, nor was anyone on No Limit; occasionally, the No Limit rappers were even talentless and clumsy. But in a time when major labels were running away from the controversy that gangsta rap caused and Dr. Dre, the father of the genre, was proclaiming it dead, Master P stayed on course, delivering album after album of unadulterated gangsta. It was recorded cheaply and packaged cheaply, and almost all of the records on No Limit were interchangeable, but that didn't matter, because Master P kept making money and getting paid.
Appropriately for someone who operated outside of conventional hip-hop circles, Master P (born Percy Miller, circa 1969) didn't come from such traditional rap locales as New York or California. Master P was based in New Orleans, a city with a rich musical tradition that nevertheless had an underdeveloped hip-hop scene. It also had an unspoken violent side that affected Master P as a teenager. After his parents' divorce, he moved between the homes of his father's mother in New Orleans and his mother in Richmond, CA. During his teens, he was on the outside of the drug and hustling culture, but he also pursued a love of basketball. He won a sports scholarship at the University of Houston, but he left the school and moved to Richmond, where he studied business at Oakland's Merritt Junior College. His grandfather died and left him ten thousand dollars in the late '80s, which Master P invested in No Limit Records. Originally, No Limit was a store, not a label.
While working at No Limit, Master P learned that there was a rap audience who loved funky, street-level beats that the major labels weren't providing. Using this knowledge, he decided to turn No Limit into a record label in 1990. The following year, he debuted with Get Away Clean and later had an underground hit with The Ghettos Tryin to Kill Me! in 1994. Around this same time, the compilation West Coast Bad Boyz, which featured rappers Rappin' 4-Tay and E-40 before they were nationally known, was released and spent over half a year on the charts. These latter two albums were significant underground hits and confirmed what Master P suspected -- there was an audience for straight-ahead, unapologetic, funky hardcore rap. He soon moved No Limit to New Orleans and began concentrating on making records.
By the mid-'90s, No Limit had developed its own production team, Beats by the Pound (comprised of Craig B., KLC, and Mo B. Dick), which worked on every one of the label's releases. And there were many releases, hitting a rate of nearly ten a year, all masterminded by Master P and Beats by the Pound. They crafted the sound, often stealing songs outright from contemporary hits. They designed album covers, which had the cheap, garishly colorful and tasteless look of straight-to-video exploitation films. And they worked fast, recording and releasing entire albums in as quickly as two weeks.
Included in that production schedule were Master P's own albums. 99 Ways to Die was released in 1995, and Ice Cream Man appeared the following year. By the time Ghetto Dope was released in the late summer of 1997, Master P had turned No Limit into a mini-empire. He had no exposure on radio or MTV, but No Limit's records sold very well, and Tru -- a group he formed with his younger brothers Silkk the Shocker and C-Murder -- had Top Ten R&B hit albums. His success in the recording industry inspired him to make I'm Bout It, an autobiographical comedy-drama titled after Tru's breakthrough hit. Master P financed the production himself, and when he found no distributor, it went straight to video in the summer of 1997.
His next film, I Got the Hook Up, appeared in theaters during the summer of 1998, concurrent with the release of his album MP da Last Don. In between flirtations with the sports world -- including a tryout with the NBA's Toronto Raptors and negotiating the NFL contract of Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams -- Master P recorded 1999's Only God Can Judge Me. Ghetto Postage and Game Face followed. The double CD Good Side, Bad Side appeared in 2004 and marked P and No Limit's new relationship with the label/distribution company Koch. Both Ghetto Bill and Living Legend: Certified D-Boy arrived a year later. The 2007 compilation Featuring...Master P rounded up some of the rapper's collaborations. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi
Fortune magazine's "America's 40 Richest Under 40" issue (Sept. 1999), listed Percy Miller (Master P) as No. 28 of 40, with $361 million. According to Forbes magazine's annual list of the richest entertainers he earned $56.5 million in 1998 alone.
In September 1999, signed a contract with the NBA's Toronto Raptors.
Plays basketball for the Fort Wayne Fury in the Continental Basketball Association.
CEO of "No Limit" Record Label based in Baton Rouge, LA.
Ranked #36 on VH1's 50 Greatest Hip Hop Artists.
In late 2007, Miller got actively involved in politics where he supported and encouraged voter participation. Miller was an early supporter for the candidacy of Illinois senator and subsequent U.S. president Barack Obama.On December 30, 2010 it was announced that Miller and his son Romeo would attend and host an event with Michelle Obama for Anti-Obesity.
None of his accomplishments and success would compare with his philanthropy and passion for helping the next generation where he created Let The Kids Grow Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is to help develop youth and their families through out-of school time and family strengthening programs in their communities. Founder Percy Miller discovered a way to help keep inner city youth off the streets away from drugs and gang violence by providing a safe haven for kids to express themselves with positive energy through film, dance and music. The foundation also offers an after school program for at-risk youth where the kids have access to academic support and guidance counseling. Let The Kids Grow program give youth and their families the tools that they need to become positive, confident, contributing members of our community.
Quotations:
"Work hard and never make excuses."
"I think you've got good people and bad people in everything you do. If you start making a big deal of it, then it's a problem. It's like in life. We've got bad doctors and lawyers. We've got bad priests! We don't target every priest and say he's bad. You have to go to church and you have to go see some doctors. Some people have to be good."
"I think everybody has a good and bad side."
"I think my thing is I grew up in the ghetto, and I was able to get a second chance. That's what I'm trying to tell kids."
"Television is not like making records. I wanna tell all you kids, do not try this at home, 'cause it's hard. It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of practice, and a lot of different takes."
Miller has declared as his lifelong commitment visiting schools and communities across the country to help underprivileged kids and their families through his organization Let The Kids Grow Foundation. For Hurricane Katrina victims, he provided shelter, resources and recovery programs. For the survivors of the Haiti earthquake, he provided water, resources, educational books and supplies to help rebuild schools.
He married his wife Sonya Miller in 1989. He has nine children. Percy Romeo, Vercy, Veno, Tytyana, Intylyana, Cymphonique, Hercy, Itali, Mercy.
