Being one of the wealthiest Rap moguls the game has ever seen, a net worth well over $200 million and your own clothing line, can do a lot to a rapper. For Master P, it has resulted in him sacrificing the quality of his music for increased record sales. Not that he was without his marketing gimmicks in the past for just that reason, but his current output seems as shameless as anything the man has released to the public yet; a public that is no longer checking for him. Never the most talented of rappers, but certainly one of the most honest, his current work simply lacks the heart and charisma of his past material.
Let’s take a step back, shall we? Let’s take it back to the days when Master P was a relative unknown. Let’s take it back to the days when Master P was selling tapes out of the trunk of his car to get his name on the tongues of Rap fans. Let’s take it back to the days when No Limit was receiving virtually no airplay other than on local radio stations. Enter Master P’s Ice Cream Man. Less cluttered with guests and that “flavor of the month” feel and more focused on creating a cohesive West Coast sound, Ice Cream Man is also one of the last of No Limit’s California-based albums. Displaying more promise than anyone could have anticipated from Pistol P and, on top of that, rearranging the game in the process, P’s Ice Cream Man is an undeniable classic straight out of the No Limit vaults.
P’s current sound is much more akin to crunk than anything he recorded during No Limit’s heyday. Ice Cream Man, on the other hand, is full of thuggish, aggressive, nihilistic raps that would sound much more comfortable on East Coast hardcore albums than on P’s latest releases. Perhaps too far ahead of his time for most to recognize, the southern Rap P was delivering here is far beyond the subgenres of the era. Hard gangsta and drug dealer anthems that sound far too ferocious for mainstream consumption; it’s obvious why P received little to no radio play.
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