Master P’s Second Act: How the Ice Cream Man Turned Corner-Store Culture Into a Shelf-Space Empire
Master P’s Second Act: How the Ice Cream Man Turned Corner-Store Culture Into a Shelf-Space Empire
Music - November 22, 2025
From Rap Snacks to Uncle P’s and Launch Cart, Master P is building an ownership blueprint rooted in Black economic power.
Master P always said the real flex wasn’t fame — it was ownership. And if you want the one-sentence summary of his second act, it’s this: he took hip-hop’s street-corner culture and turned it into a grocery-store empire. Chips, noodles, cereal, water, pancake mix — products people buy every day, now with Black founders on the barcode.
This isn’t nostalgia. It’s a strategy. And it’s one of the most overlooked business stories in modern culture.
Most people know the prologue. Master P didn’t buy back his masters — he never sold them. He negotiated an unheard-of distribution deal in the ’90s that let him keep 100% of them while collecting roughly 80–85% of wholesale revenue. That master ownership became his seed fund. No Limit Records printed money, and Master P used that money to buy everything the neighborhood already consumed — except now, the neighborhood could own it.
His first major expansion was into the snack aisle. Rap Snacks existed before him, but when founder James Lindsay partnered with P in 2017, the brand jumped from a cult favorite into a true consumer product line. Distribution exploded — over 4,200 Walmart stores, then Target, then independent grocers, then international markets. Rap Snacks became a multi-million-dollar business in scale, and P helped architect its extensions: Rap Noodles, rice, cereal — everyday pantry items infused with hip-hop DNA.
Then came Uncle P’s, his answer to Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s. At a moment when America was rethinking racist food branding, Master P created an alternative: Black-owned rice, flour, grits, beans, pancake mix, syrup — products that had historically used Black imagery without giving Black people ownership or equity. That’s the thesis that drives him: Black-owned brands aren’t a vibe — they’re economic weapons. As he puts it, “It all starts with ownership.”
Master P doesn’t build products; he builds alternatives.
Alternatives to Quaker. Alternatives to Post. Alternatives to Kellogg’s.
He wants shelf space to look like the communities that built the culture in the first place.
Breakfast wasn’t safe either. He launched Master Crunch cereal — then joined forces with Snoop Dogg to create Broadus Foods, which partnered with Post Consumer Brands to release Snoop Cereal and Snoop Loopz nationwide. What happened next reveals how the real game works: Master P and Snoop sued Post and Walmart, alleging the retailers intentionally hid, blocked, or understocked their cereals to sabotage sales. The case is ongoing, not resolved yet — a modern David vs. Goliath fight between a Black-owned startup and one of the largest cereal manufacturers in the world.
This is where the story deepens. Master P isn’t just making food — he’s taking swings at industries that historically boxed Black founders out. When one door closes, he builds another. “Business is like a seesaw,” he says. “When one goes down, I have the other one going up.”
That seesaw includes LA Great Water, his bottled-water and beverage company that became part of hurricane-relief efforts in Louisiana. And now he’s expanding into tech. In 2023, he became Chairman of Launch Cart, an e-commerce platform aiming to challenge Shopify with lower fees and more creator-friendly infrastructure. It’s the same logic as Rap Snacks, just applied to software: if culture drives demand, culture should own the rails.
The narrative is simple but powerful:
Master P’s businesses exist to solve a problem — Black communities love these products, so Black entrepreneurs should own them.
The grocery aisle is where he’s fighting that battle. The water cooler too. And the cereal shelf. And now the checkout backend online.
Master P’s first fortune was built in studios. His second one is being built in supermarkets. And if you ask him, it’s all the same game:
ownership → equity → generational wealth.
The rapper era made him rich. The shelf-space era might make him immortal.
