Master P Called Snoop Dogg A Used Car Before Signing Him For $1 Million

0:00Jimmy Iovine was gonna give me a million dollars. I turned that down. And why did you say no? I figured if this white guy don't know me, he gonna give me a million dollars, how much am I worth? 20, 30, 40, 50, like, come on, man. In 1998, you guys released 23 albums. Yes. I think I watched Scarface and The Godfather so much. I made him a deal that he couldn't refuse. I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse. And then I come up with Country Boy, got my little suitcase. And I'm like, man, I'm gonna give you a million three. He's like, man, you shitting me, though. You ain't going to give me no million three.

0:32Here you go, sir. I was out there with Tupac and them, and I was the opening act. They thought I was a country singer. Next to the stage, Mr. P, the country singer. I'm like, who? I went to Michael Jackson, lawyer. I invested in myself, gave him$25 ,000 just to talk to him. Sometimes when you have big vision, you got to be a little crazy.

0:55Master P, thank you for being here. Yes, sir. In 1998, Master P and his label, No Limit Records, 100 % real music, released over 20 albums. To cap off that run, Master P dropped what many did believe his best album, MP, The Last Dawn. Master P's most successful album. It went number one, sold half a million copies first week, and went four times platinum. The album touched on everything from Black Empowerment to New Orleans Street Lord. The album was made to be a soundtrack to an accompanying gangster film written and produced by Master P. I've been through so much, so my life is a movie. It was everything that Master P had learned, accomplished in one project.

1:37This year, Master P and his No Limit Soldiers are going on tour with Crosstown Rivals' Cash Money Records. I gotta take my hat off to Cash Money for, you know, definitely for representing me. For real. We sit down with Master P to talk about the growth from his first album, everything he's learned, how he managed to sign Snoop Dogg when he was locked into a terrible deal with Suge Knight and Death Row Records. And I told him that, look, bro, you sign a bad deal. You know that. And how he managed to get a distribution deal with Priority Records that Michael Jackson's own lawyer said the king of pop could never get.

2:08It was like, well, if we give you a distribution deal, you're going to take all the risks. I said, I get it. I've been taking risks all my life, man. I live in the project. I'm Damian Scott. This is Boardroom and this is On Record. You have a pretty big fall and winter lined up. You're going on tour with Cash Money. It's the No Limit Cash Money tour. What brought this about? I think us growing, time, letting God do what he do, and to have the Magnolia and the Callio all in one place at one time, it's going to be incredible. It's also showing these kids, put all this beef, put all this stuff behind you.

2:46Let's do what's right for the next generation because that's what it's about. So this concert is bigger than just going on tour. We're bringing awareness to mental health. A lot of people deal with mental health, but nobody say nothing about it. Everybody is afraid to talk about it. So I think that we're going to be able to touch the world and let them know that we're able to bring awareness to something that a lot of inner city kids have been dealing with a long time, never get the right counseling, don't get the right medical. a lot of inner city people are self-medicating. So I think this is bigger than us.

3:25This tour is about making a difference. What would success look like for you after the tour? Showing the next generation about how important peace is. All the records we sold, we sold 100 million records. And us being able to say, you know what? Let's unite. We're stronger together. Let's do this for the culture. and then getting everybody for no limit to getting the whole world to step back out into their camouflage. One more time for the streets, it's going to be like a soldier masquerade party. So everybody putting their camo on. I've seen this happen before with artists. They go through their career and then they try to inform the youth about the mistakes that they've made and try to make it so they can do better.

4:10How can you be more effective at getting that message to a younger generation? Well, I mean, I know that we all go through phases in life. So I've been doing this for 30 years and they know that I'm a living testimony that if you do the right thing, you can survive this. You can be successful. Look at Snoop. Yo, what's up, y 'all? It's Snoop, D-O-double-G. So Snoop came through the university, no limit. and he went from being one of the greatest students to now he's probably one of the biggest bosses in the game now. Yeah. And taking that advice, being able to listen, growing, and letting God lead you on the journey.

4:52I mean, that's all we could do is give the ones that want the advice and the ones that want to change and grow. I mean, that's what it took for me. I had to see somebody go through something and say, hey, I don't want to go through that. Right. I've seen somebody be successful and say, hey, that's what I want to do. So hopefully we're inspired. So if they see it, you think it would be easier for them. Yeah, and I tell people all the time, I mean, that's what makes the difference with me. I tell people all the time that the turtle always wins. So you don't have to be the fastest one. I didn't just jump out and I was successful.

5:28I know a lot of people look at, hey, man, Pete, you did all this. You created an empire. Yeah, I was going to say, we can go back to 98 and it's kind of crazy. yeah the speed at which you guys were doing everything but we still was moving like the turtle okay everybody was running sprinting it's a marathon yeah i was just going going going going at my own pace yeah which it might have seemed fast to some people but to me it was going like the turtle okay but like i said the turtle always win interesting it's been 20 years the last died 28 28 wow crazy you see what i'm saying so it's like but my fans have been there with me the whole time like we've been selling out arenas and fans been coming they still doing the masterpiece soldier dance i love it man i couldn't do it without my fans uh i'm so thankful and humble for my fans yeah and they show out every night every time i perform you just see the camel everywhere and the camel came from my grandfather and oh really yeah my grandfather's in the military right and uh he told me son you need to start your own army and start your own business and that's that's where no limit come from interesting and that was the name of the record shop you opened up when you first moved to richmond california that's where i learned how to hustle music uh the bay area the last don yeah that's the album that you wanted to uh touch on i could touched on a number of your records uh this is the one that you were like let's dive into it so i'm curious from you why is this the album that you that you're drawn to after all these years so for me right it was not only just an album but it was a movie at the same time quite literally a movie a movie a real movie where people don't realize i played this basketball coach and then And my dad was this kingpin.

7:33And he died and I took over the family business. But I just wanted to show people that you could use your imagination. And not only we making music, we making movies and music at the same time, which now a lot of people is doing that because everything is visual. But back then, nobody was doing that. Like everything is content now. Yeah, everything is content. But you were very early to that. Yeah. You know, you were making music, and then the movies were like billboards for the music, and then you had actual billboards outside in the records. You had more advertisements. It was this insane. Everything about marketing.

8:15Yeah. Everything about marketing. But the last nine came from me looking at all these Scarface, Godfather movies, but you never seen a black person running a movie. Or winning. Winning. Yeah. Storing in it. And I'm like, now I got to change that. Yeah. In the hip hop scene, because that's all we was watching back then. Oh, yeah. So we was watching those movies. I think I watched Scarface so much and The Godfather so much. And I'm like, man, these movies influence our culture. But none of us owned any of them. None of us starred in until later when Denzel Washington played. than Frank Lucas. Yeah, yeah.

9:01I don't mean to jump into the album, but you saying that brings to mind a few bars on the album. That's like a theme that runs through a number of the songs, this idea that black people are consumers of an industry that they don't control, that they don't particularly have that much vested interest in. Because there's a lot of gatekeepers. And you were rapping about this back in 98. Yes, I was rapping about it because it was real. And nobody was expressing that because they didn't understand it because they wasn't at that success level. But they didn't know what came with success because it wasn't too much ownership.

9:43And so with me having an 85-15 deal, which was unheard of and being able to sign Snoop, black kids wasn't seeing that type of operation. And so I wanted to show them, like, if I could do it, you could do it. We need to create more of me. And that's what I wanted to have. And I wanted to see more, not just me. Famous Tommy Hilfiger line on the album where you're like, you know, they can market to us, but we don't actually have any of that. Yeah. Was this something that you you're still talking about it? So I know it resonates deep within you. But at that time, was there a very specific instance that made you want to talk about that?

10:23Well, looking at the Black Wall Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma, that made me just like, man, they just got rid of a whole place where black power and business ran the culture, ran the community. And just wiped it out. And I'm like, man, we can't just wipe out history like that. so we've been fighting for so long but i want to show people that we can do it like look at nike right nike started out of their garage how come we can't do it right you know we we just consumers yeah so being consumers and having a trillion dollar uh spending power as african americans and there's no ownership i'm like i want people to get that in their mind i I don't want them to understand that.

11:20I want them to be able to change and grow and say, look at this guy come from music, come from the Cali-Yo projects, but he's educated enough to be able to speak that language on a Wall Street level, on a corporate America level, and see the injustice that we're going to build a generational wealth. Because that's what the last nine album was about, building generational wealth. Even though you hear the music, me and Bob's always talk about, But guess what? I've always given the audience something in the end to let them know. Turn your dirty money into good money. You know, don't be afraid to change.

11:57This is how it ends. It don't end good, so get out the game. And that's what The Last Dime was about. It's like, look, man, wake up. Like, all that's over with. Like, you want to die young in the ghetto and leave your family with nothing? No, it's okay to get older. It's okay to get smaller. It's okay to get wiser. Drugs kill and I don't even want to see y 'all go out like that. So be an individual, stand up on your own, be a leader, not a follower. And that's real. The whole philosophy of the dime is about wisdom. Being a boss come with entrepreneurship. The boss get paid less, but the boss get paid more.

12:37That's what that album was for me and the culture. Right. Going back to it and listening to it, a few things stuck out to me. One, the production brought me right back to 1998. It's incredible. It's all done in house, correct? All done. And the other thing was, I forgot how central you were in rap at that point in time. Everybody's on this album from all different parts of the map. There's E-40, there's UGK, there's Snoop Dogg. Can you take me back to 98 and explain to me how you were able to bring the rap world together on that album? Yeah, I mean, just saying that this is bigger than me. I've always thought with a team mindset.

13:27So I played basketball and it was always about a team or a family. And everybody around me is going to get a piece of this. Like, we're going to work together on this. And we're going to let everybody shine. Because that was my thing. I just want my team to shine. And what they do with it, that's on them. But I'm giving them an opportunity to shine on something that I know that's going to be a piece of some of my best work. I went to Pen and Pixel, got the cover made. I wanted to have that kind of like 3D moving type of artwork. And that never had been done at that time. I went and got this album Mastered by Bernie Grubber In LA Which is The best mastering company Me and XL I see it like Yesterday Me and XL Donald Robinson We stood in there Maybe about Two weeks Just mastering this project Wow In Los Angeles Just That's crazy to think about Because I I look back at the Yeah In like 1998 you guys released 23 albums.

14:39Yes. So Tahir, you spent two weeks just mastering this one. Yeah, just mastering a record, just sitting there. Same place where Michael Jackson went at to master his record. Yeah. So me and XL sitting in there while most people like, man, what are y 'all doing? No, we got to get this right. We want to get this right. And that part of my life, just finding people that think outside the box. And when you look at it, that's what made this album so magical that I had people that thought outside the box. I had movie makers like we're going to make a movie with this at the same time. We're doing all this at the same time in that same year to put this project out.

15:25Everybody's think, where you going to sell this at? I said, I'm going to sell it to the record store. The record stores don't sell movies. They're going to sell mine. And they did. How was that conversation when you brought the idea to that? Man, when I brought the idea, everybody thought I was crazy. Sometimes when you have big vision, you got to be a little crazy. And this was completely produced by you? Everything. No outside financing? No. No outside producers? None of my records. Nobody ever paid for none of my records. Me. I mean, when I first went to priority, I gave them$200 ,000 to do the distribution deal.

16:01That was the only way I got the distribution deal. So Jimmy Iovine was going to give me a million dollars. I turned that down. That's a true story. Yeah. Jimmy Iovine offered you a million dollars. Yeah. For what? To sign my company. All of No Limit. Yeah. For how long? Seven years. Seven years for a million dollars. And you said no. I said no. And why did you say no? I figured if this white guy don't know me, he's going to give me a million dollars. How much am I worth? 20, 30, 40, 50. I'd be like, come on, man. I went to school. I went to college. I wasn't just a rapper. That's why I say the education part.

16:37Did he come back after you say no and offer you more? No, he couldn't. Because think about it. I got an 85-15 deal. He told me I wasn't going to get a deal. No one had that deal at that time. No. But I went to Michael Jackson, lawyer. I invested in myself, gave him$25 ,000 just to talk to him. And he said, Percy, the only deal you could get is an 85-15 deal. And Michael don't even have this deal. but you're going to need$200 ,000 marketing. I said, okay. So I went back selling my CDs out the trunk of my car. And then when I finally got somebody else to believe in me, which was project record, I say, I don't want no record deal.

17:15I want a distribution deal. And it was like, how do you know about a distribution deal? I know. It was like, well, if we give you a distribution deal, you're going to take all the risks. I said, I get it. I am. I've been taking risks all my life, man. I live in the project. Now that sort of deal is prevalent in the industry. You have distribution companies like Empire that do deals like that all the time. But in the early 90s, that wasn't heard of. In the 80s, that wasn't heard of. That was unheard of. Like I said, Michael Jackson was getting 22 % of record. And he had probably the highest deal in the music industry.

17:50Did that spur you to then say, all right, we got to take advantage of this. Let's go. I'm going to produce as much music as possible. That was the mindset I had. I never thought about money. Think about it. I was just spending money. So I want artists to know, right, when you go get a deal, you're getting people to believe in you, and that's why you get taken advantage of, right? You're going in there to where it's like most artists back then, if Michael Jackson was getting 22%, most artists back then was getting 7 % to 14%. That Michael Jackson deal was unheard of. And guess what? but nobody complained after they took those 7 % or 14%.

18:34And that's because they don't know a lot of these white company owners. So think about it. If you look at it, even today, you only hear the complaint to if like a Puffy or a Suge Knight or a black person owned a company, right? You hear the complaints, but you don't hear that because they don't sit at the table with you. And that's why I had to create my own table with the last dime. I'm like, okay, I'm going to control the table because we don't get mad with them because we don't know them. You don't know who the CEO of those companies is. They're not going to sit down with you. Especially you're not going to know who the shareholders of these companies are.

19:15So even at this day, nobody go and vent on social media who the shareholders. You might know who the president of the company is, but you don't know who the shareholders of these companies are. That's the ones who are making the decisions. Like the board. Yeah, the board. And so that's why you don't never see them get – you don't see an artist get mad at none of those guys. Think about it. They only get mad at people that they done sit down and ate with. Or that they see on TV. Yeah. Yeah. And so we got to get out of that mindset. Because think about it. Once you sign it, that's like me, right?

19:45When I signed that deal with priority, whatever I made, I made. I can't go back and get mad about it. I got to be able to say this business. Okay, that's what I agree. Even with them. They couldn't get mad at me because they signed an 85-15 deal with me. And they never did it with nobody else. They're like, oh, you know how many records he sold? He done made more money than us. But that was the deal we did. I couldn't go back later, or they couldn't go back later and be like, well, P, we need to change this. No. This is the deal we did. Now, I want artists to know that, like, we have to educate ourselves.

20:18We have to understand the deals we're making. And guess what? But the money you're making when you're hot is not going to last forever. So don't go 10, 20, 30 years later thinking that these companies owe you something. Because think about it. A lot of those companies take losses. A lot of those companies has returns. But artists don't talk about that. They just talk about the CEOs that they could see and could actually touch. But the rest of them, think about it. It's millions of artists just with bad deals. and they go on and move and go find another bad deal. They're waiting for those years to be up over.

20:53And I said, I'm not about to do that. I'm going to create my own company and brand. I'll be able to put people on and I'll be able to help the people that understand that this is not going to last forever. Like I've never gotten into the music business thinking I'm going to be on top of the music business forever. And that's why I created The Last Dime because I'm like, you know what? You got to take advantage of a moment. And when that moment over, then I'm going to get into products and i'm gonna get into well definitely definitely a moment it's also uh it's funny to think about it now this was supposed to be your retirement album yes this was billed as your swan song yeah that was it so that's what i'm gonna do i want my fans to know because they've been like p you gotta put this movie out so snoop doing his movie which will be coming out next year and then the master p only if you go or could judge me, movie will be coming out.

21:50And we working on it now, but I'm stopping in 98 because I'm going to go from 10 year old kid to 1998 with this Last Dine album. Speaking of Snoop, so 98, no limits on top of the world. If not the most powerful, one of the most powerful rap labels in the country. You have Snoop Dogg on the label who was a few years earlier the hottest artist in rap. His debut, Doggy Style, was everywhere, coast to coast. It was the biggest debut in rap that we'd ever seen. And then a few years later, you somehow managed to get him out of his death row deal and you signed him to No Limit. No one saw that coming.

22:36Can you walk us through how that happened? I seen Snoop at Priority Records because I had an office in Priority Records. and I could tell that he was unhappy. I looked at Snoop as the biggest artist in the world to me. Like, why is this guy not happy? And I'm like, man, you know the saddest thing about this? Because I watched Biggie Smalls die. I watched Tupac die. I'm like, man, these people don't appreciate you until you're dead. And I say, nah, man, I got to show this guy some love now and show the world that he's not done. Like, this is the biggest artist in the world. And I've seen it. It's almost like watching the old call somebody trying to sell.

23:20They don't want it. You're like, man, you don't appreciate what you got until it's gone. And so I don't even think that road knew what Snoop Dogg meant to our culture. Even though he had the biggest debut in rap ever at the time. But, you know, like I said, I mean, he signed a bad deal. Yeah. So you can't be mad about it. And I told him that, look, bro, you signed a bad deal. You know that. So everybody not like me. I tear the contract up. If you don't want to be with me, go on about your business, move on. I'm going to make my own money. That's just how I am. That's how I operate in integrity.

23:53So I told Snoop that everybody don't operate like that. Think about this. It's business. These people put money behind you. Can't be mad at Suge. He put the money up. He made you out of the store. He going to get what he want to get out of. That's just how the system go. The white man been doing this for years. But for me, you know, grow up in the college school, my grandparents raised me different, three people fell, and then they'll come back to you, and I'm like, Snoop, let's go do this. I got you, bro. And the rest was history. But what are the details? You go to Death Row, and what's your pitch to them?

24:31I'm buying a used car. How much you want for them? That was the pitch. How much you want for your used car? and you know i'm a sudden this used car is a platinum selling artist yeah but it's still a used car because you don't believe in it think about i got a lot of nice cars that after three four five years like you don't even i brought a ferrari man one year the next couple years i didn't drive it i didn't like it it's just sitting in the house so if somebody hey p what you want for that ferrari i'm like that one you want that one yeah okay this is what i want and that's all it was. It's like, what you want for that used car?

25:07So what did he want? He told me what he wanted, and I gave it to him. Do you remember the actual number? A couple mil, and I knew what he was gonna get from the other record companies. So I just think I put like an extra 300 on it. Just for him to... Yeah, but to get the deal, you're already about to sign with somebody. He was about to sell Snoop to another company. So I'm like, man, my money don't spend. You know, I'm a country boy. I got a couple dollars. I just won't know. Do my money spent. That's it. I made him a deal that he couldn't refuse because he's already about to sell us anyway. So it's like you about to sell your car to a guy and he's like, hey, man, I'm on a million dollars for this.

25:49And then I come up, a country boy, got my little suitcase. And I'm like, man, I'm going to give you a million three. He's like, man, you shit me, though. You ain't going to give me no million three. Here you go, sir. But I believed in Snoop Dogg because, man, he's probably one of my favorite artists coming up and just watching his work and watch how hard he worked. I said, man, if somebody treat this guy right, he's going to be the next biggest star in the world. He's probably going to be the next biggest boss. And when I got with Snoop, he was probably one of my most favorite students because he listened.

26:27Everything I was doing, he's just like a fly on the wall. What did you tell him when he first came on to No Limit? First, we're going to get your house. We're going to put in your name. We're going to get your cards, put in your name, and we're going to give you some money so you can do your own thing. You can be comfortable. I know once he's comfortable, we're going to be able to make music. We're going to be able to make good music. And that's what we did. And then everything that I invested, he made it back. He was ready to go on his own. He started his own label. I showed him how to do it.

26:58and we've been brothers ever since. So our families, our kids know each other. We just one big family. I'm proud of him that he turned into a real boss. And he know that I'm proud of him because he put the work in. Snoop put the work in. Even though he smoked weed, I don't know how he do it. He the only person I know smoked weed that worked just as hard as me. That's just up every day, getting up, handling his business, taking care of his family and then finding other deals. So that's what it's about with us. It's about finding. I like building stuff. And Snoop the same way. Like, we don't do this for money.

27:35I never work for money. Think about it. I never made a record for money. It's like, you know how some people say, hey, I'm going to make a million dollars when I put this out. No. I just like creating and building. I grew up in a project, so I never was, like, had to be the toughest guy in the world. I just showed up. Like, I never thought I was a tough guy. You know, I just handle my business when I need to handle it. And I think that's the thing. Me going to that Catholic school, dealing with those priests and nuns over there and getting a foundation, that's probably the most important thing that I think my grandfather, the fuckers, knowing who God is.