Master P talks about the ups and down of having a foot in the hood and another in the boardroom.
AllHipHop.com: What’s the status of the New No Limit, who do you have signed and where are you taking it?
Master P: I’ma tell you something. My hustling skills are too good. They know where I am going to take this. With nothing. No big promotions, just putting out good music. I was so country people didn’t want to listen to my music. It didn’t stop me. When the real people caught on, that’s the street word of mouth. Everybody knows this Master P album is real. This sh*t is for real. At the end of the day you are going to have to bend down.
AllHipHop.com: What’s going on with Silkk?
MP: He’s working on his album right now and a new one is coming from Lil Romeo too. The New No Limit is me Silkk, Rome, Official and Currency. We definitely got our hands full. We are going to put out all solid, street records. Romeo is the only cross over record we are going to put out this year. We toned it down to get what we need. But we built an incredible empire. Now it’s time for us to do us.
AllHipHop.com: How is C-Murder doing mentally?
MP: It could happen to anyone of us. If you’re an innocent man and your going through what C is going through, he’s a soldier. He realizes this is what happens when you aren’t focused. He aint gonna sit around and cry about it All we can do is pray. You might get hit by a car and it takes your legs off, you gotta live with it, you were dealt a bad hand. When your out here, you gotta make the best of it. C is a gangster. He aint tripping, but he knows he’s innocent and got a bad hand. The man up above will make sure the truth comes out. In the long run, we gonna get the last laugh.
AllHipHop.com: There are some things about the case that made you guys appeal.
MP: The district attorney let people out of jail with bad records to testify. They had a camera in the club, why don’t they show the videotape? They know the DA tampered with the evidence. C is stereotyped because of his name. You gotta know what to name yourself, gotta watch the people you hang with and the environment your in. You never think about non of that stuff while you are just out here. When your making money, you gotta mature at some level in the game. I’m trying to teach kids now, there’s no such thing as keeping it real. You gotta keep it real with yourself. You being in the hood or even making it out isn’t keeping it real. Going back and trying to save some of these kids is keeping it real.
AllHipHop.com: How did you manage to do the Nickelodeon thing? We know P’s background with music, he managed to get himself and Lil Romeo on a kids network?
MP: That’s what you gotta respect with me. I aint afraid to go out of my boundaries. We got a whole new audience. I got a good and a bad side. I aint afraid to tell Nickelodeon I come from the streets. But I can clean myself up to be with my son. I can do that, I don’t have nothing to prove. N*gga damn right I’m going on Nickelodeon with my son. I’m gonna get this money. Aint none of yall gonna feed me. I’ll do anything for my son. The hood aint going no where. I love it and it aint going no where, but I aint gonna let it take me down. I wouldn’t stop any one else. You could be the biggest gangster in the world, but you take the opportunity.
If one of them shows opens up and is gonna pay for you? You better go for it and I’ll be the first one to applaud you. That’s not real. Only a hater would say “stay in the hood and die with us.” When we was on the streets we would have done anything for our families. Now Romeo could be the next Will Smith. We made history in Hip-Hop. The first father and son on TV in Hip-Hop. A thug off the street and corporate America accept me? Acting is just a job, it’s like watching Steven Seagull. He don’t kill people in real life. That’s how I look at it. I am getting millions of dollars to act. We changed our lives, but sure aint forget. Don’t think that cause we doing right you can step on our toes. This sh*t is like riding a bike, we still no how to thug, but we coming in peace.
AllHipHop.com: How do you keep Romeo grounded?
MP: I take him to the projects and show him where we come from. If you don’t handle your business, this where you could be tomorrow. When he sees one of his cousin’s funerals that was still in the hood, he knows what’s up. He knows it’s blessed. We still go to funerals in the hood. When your black with money, you still gotta know how to survive and handle yourselves on the street. He knows he’s blessed. White people don’t have to worry about people coming up to them and jackin them when they get rich.
AllHipHop.com: What do you think of some of the people that left No Limit?
MP: Everybody should read into it. If all them people said No Limit because of P, why is he success 10 years later and all those people that went other places had opportunities, why are they not doing nothing? You goin on 5 six years later, why you still talking about P instead of your records that aren’t selling? All the sh*t you said about em, all them people needed a coach. That’s what I was to them. Look at Mystikal in jail? That would have never happened with us because he was focused. Him and Snoop was the best out of the best out of all them. They were the only ones that could stand on their on. But they didn’t have a coach. It’s like Shaq and Kobe without Phil Jackson. Without someone making decisions, you got players running around not knowing what to do. Sometimes you gotta accept your role. It’s not worth the extra $100,000 you might get.
AllHipHop.com: With Soulja Slim, did you have a really bad beef going on?
MP: I never seen the man since he left No Limit. If I have a problem with someone, I call em up and talk about it. I haven’t seen him and like I told you, I don’t entertain negativity. That’s how I make it. There must be 20 people that left No Limit, so it’s whatever.
AllHipHop.com: Do you recruit rappers from other areas?
MP: My group Official is from Philly. My thing is it’s just been going that way. Most of the talent we met is from New Orleans, but I’m down with signing talent. It don’t matter where your from?
AllHipHop.com: What do you think about the Hip-Hop police? You had a situation at the airport with the hollow tip bullets. You think you’ve been watched?
MP: I been through that. That’s for these new rappers. Once you get successful, they watch. They don’t know what your gonna do. Some people don’t realize rap is a job and they still live that other life. That’s why there’s rap police. A lot of them made the game bad doing stupid stuff, so they are going to mess with it. I can’t get mad at whatever the system is set up for. Society already pushed us out there to fail and some of us are falling into that. That’s what people don’t realize that’s why it was important for me to get on Nickelodeon. We aint gotta worry about watched.
AllHipHop.com: What’s your take on the election?
MP: It aint about what you believe or don’t believe. We should be in a position to state who we want to be in office. You should want to be a part of that. We don’t look at some of the stuff that makes sense. We look at more the negative stuff, right. Now it will effect us, but down the line you don’t want someone you don’t want in office.
AllHipHop.com: It seems like people don’t think education is important.
MP: Education is important. If you gonna make it, you gotta know how to read and write. People look at me like I really matured. A couple years ago, No Limit might not have shut down because of the lawsuits and paying people for nothing. Corporate America respects me as a shrewd business man, while the other ones try to laugh. That’s what I mean, you have to be educated. He aint about to just give nobody nothing. We don’t surround ourselves around positive. You gotta hang around people that are positive. We glorify all of this stuff and that’s not the right thing to do. We get caught in what they want us to be caught in. We hate each other instead of loving each other.
