Master P And TRU: The Cali Era

When it comes to a genre as broad as hip-hop, cutting through the weak beats is a full-time job. In each installment of Mean Muggin’, Ethan Padgett spreads some shine to the cats who deserve it and hates on those who don’t, whether they’re underground or overground, superstar or indie darling. This time out he’s taking it back before the gold tank, riding through the streets of the Bay Area with a pre-crossover Master P.

Chances are you’ve probably got a lot of pre-formed ideas about Master P and No Limit Records, whether you’re still bugging over the “Make ‘Em Say Uhh” video or that Nickelodeon sitcom with Lil’ Romeo. But while P has kept himself in the game over the last ten years, even as the big gold tank tarnished, there’s not enough heads up on P cuts from his Cali days, way before he rocked a Hornets jersey (or some ugly-ass Percy Miller FUBU knock-offs), when he was just a player out West, moving dubbed Maxells out the trunk and making G money.

After Percy Miller’s parents split up, his moms went out to Richmond, Calif., and he stayed in New Orleans’ Calliope Projects with his brothers, including future TRU members and No Limit soldiers C-Murder (Corey Miller) and Silkk the Shocker (Vyshonne Miller, then known simply as “Silk”), while non-rapping Kevin Miller was deep in the hustle. For a while P sold dope, too, but he eventually made the decision to jet to Cali and be with ma dukes. In 1991, with $10k brought up from N.O., he opened an underground store in Oakland called “No Limit Records.” And after seeing how much cash hustlers like Too $hort were getting with their dirty tapes, it was only a matter of time before the original rapper-slash-businessman put his name out there.

1991’s cheap, enjoyable Get Away Clean was a rowdy NWA-influenced collection of tasteless sexism and cold verses. It sold over 100,000 copies. 1994 brought the slicker hardcore style of The Ghetto’s Tryin’ To Kill Me!, one of the great hip-hop records and one of the most successful independent releases of the ’90s, going gold without radio play or MTV jams. It showcased P’s talent for assembling a line-up studded with underground stars, and almost every track featured a grubby, scene-stealing guest rap from dudes like Cali G and JT the Bigga Figga, while P crewed up with Brotha Lynch Hung, the Dayton Family, San Quinn, some of the nastiest rappers ever to pick up a mic.

There’s a whole gang of pissed-off tank-top dudes who still maintain that these records are the only good material P and No Limit ever released, and while they’re wrong, you can see where they’re coming from. These early ’90s No Limit albums are sooty, unflossy, full of murder raps and up-tempo woodgrain funk beats, mostly produced by E-A Ski’s homie CMT. Before Tru was P’s boys Silkk the Shocker and C-Murder, it was a loose coalition of Bay Area legends and smoked-out G’s. 1994’s Understanding The Criminal Mind, the hardest record out of the early No Limit LPs, proves that a Louisiana player could hang with the pre-bounce gangsterism of Compton’s Most Wanted and Above the Law, just P and his crew freaking the hell out of blatant Marvin and Chic samples while spitting the most belligerent shit you could imagine.

In ’94, the Bay comprised one of the craziest, most creative scenes in rap’s history, from funky goofs like E-40 and Digital Underground to all the geeked-up Hieroglyphics cats expanding the Native Tongues steez. And all of these disparate sounds managed to find their way into some of the biggest cash-in records of the era when thrown in with TRU’s visceral hardcore. Understanding introduces all of the since-faded members of the click, one at a time. Original TRU cat and Cali legend E-A Ski spits with the righteous, turn-of-the-decade fury of Cube or MC Eiht, on some Industry Rule No. 4080 tip while packing a nine for record execs. Rally Ral, who went on to have a cut on the surprisingly dope Street Fighter movie soundtrack, sprints around the bass with raw quotables. King George pops a cold stare and the heat in his hand, later taking his grime to TRU’s True LP and teaming with Gangsta T & Silkk for “Bounce That Azz” off P’s 1995 Bouncin’ And Swangin mixtape. And then Master P, spitting surprising anti-establishment/Malcolm rhymes to compliment his general fuck-a-rap-critic stance.

But after a while, you realize that TRU are simply opposed to anybody fucking up their money, from taxman to meter maid; the style is playful but the content is bleak, staying gutter throughout, with P taking every move to ghettify his sound on a crime and punishment tip. P was already 27 when Understanding dropped, but his adolescent stance (he repeatedly refers to himself as 19-years-old on Understanding) was one of the most profitable business decisions of the era. The whole record comes off like a low-budget response to Cube’s Death Certificate and Ruthless Records, with beats like Clinton-era Pimp C, pre-G-funk: the rolling church organ, chicken scratch guitar, bass drops, and R&B flavor. No Limit was always about transparent influences, and even the biggest bites have a certain charm to them.

A couple years ago I spoke to C-Murder about recording TRU”s 1995 True, and I feel like what he said then applies here as well: “It was real, blunts and gin, the studio was packed, and you had better be able to write your lyrics fast or you wasn’t going to be on a song.” It’s just a bunch of broke hustlers rapping about sex, money, and murder with the same grungy flavor. E-A Ski still keeps the Bay alive, while Rally Ral and King George faded into obscurity without even stopping by the Koch graveyard. Big Ed died of cancer in 2001 after releasing one of No Limit’s most underrated, 1998’s The Assassin. And P, businessman first and rapper second, kept on his grind, dropping a MySpace exclusive album last year and threatening a duets record, free of cussing. No Limit’s original biters in Cash Money get more respect nowadays, but eight million Lil’ Wayne verses rhyming “dolphin” with “orphan” won’t even cover the cost of one of P’s 14-karat shoelace tips. Before every not-a-rapper-I’m-a-hustler, he put money over music whenever the choice came, whether it was a Forbes cover for pimping Priority Records or jacking “Let’s Get It On” for a sloppy pimp rap. And yet I can’t deny this Mafia-style free market attack led to some of the dopest records in history.