Master P recently served as the keynote speaker at the A3C Festival in Atlanta. The CEO of No Limit shared knowledge on how he got his start in business, his independent hustle, and turning down $1 million from Jimmy Iovine from Interscope.
“I turned down $1 million from Jimmy Iovine,” Master P said. “My brother was like, ‘We need to take that money and take over the hood.’ it was a bad contract. It was a seven year deal. I could never use my name anymore. Jimmy was like, ‘I got Suge Knight, I got Puff, If I had you, I got the hood. I told him I was going to get something to eat, I left and never came back. I decided to search on how I could get my own label. At the time, Michael Jackson had the best deal. He was getting about 22 cents per record sold. I went to Michael Jackson’s lawyer. He told me he would talk with me if I gave him $25,000. That was a lot of money in the 1990s [laughs]. So I talked to him and he said the only thing that can put you close to Michael Jackson is a distribution deal. He told me I needed $200,000 to market my album. So I had to figure it out. The record companies came in the hood and tried to sign me. He was from Priority Records. I told him I wanted a distribution deal. I had about $200,000 to market. The label agreed to do the deal. I was able to take my story and believe in it.”
