Why music mogul Master P couldn’t hack being a repo man

Betsy Wagner
·Senior Producer
Updated

Long before he inked one of the most lucrative deals in music history, rapper Master P was a repo man, repossessing furniture for Remco, a private rent-to-own company. He worked in the San Francisco Bay Area and lasted just a year before he quit.

In an interview with Jen Rogers for Yahoo Finance’s My Three Cents, he called it the “worst environment” for him. He remembers one job he just couldn’t see through: repossessing an elderly woman’s sofa. “She was so tough,” he recalled laughing. “I’m like, ‘You know what, just let her keep it.’”

His supervisor pushed back, but Master P stayed firm. His boss’s response: "This line of work don't work for you."

Best job

Master P went on to become one of the most successful (and richest) rappers of the 1990s and even squeezed in a stint as a player in the NBA along the way. Later, he built a diverse portfolio of businesses, with stakes in film, footwear, jewelry and even a gas station. Today he is worth an estimated $250 million.

While his repo job was by far his worst, his best job was owning his own record shop, No Limit Records, in San Francisco. “I learned the business from the ground up,” he said. “ Everything about music, marketing, I learned it right there in that store. So that was my best job.”

My Three Cents is a weekly interview series that explores celebrities’ history with — and relationship to — money. Find it exclusively on Yahoo Finance.

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