MP Da Last Don

by Stephen Thomas ErlewineThe double-CD set that No Limit godfather Master P envisioned as his final solo album, MP da Last Don was greeted with reams of press clippings by the media and open arms by the public, who sent it to 112 on the charts, the week before it was scheduled to be released. All this means is that Master P's master business plan worked -- he was able to position himself as the leader of the underground just to sell records. And there's no other way to view MP da Last Don; it's nothing but product, albeit well-made product. Spanning two CDs and 29 songs, the album is more of an advertisement for upcoming No Limit releases than a last will and testament. All of the No Limit roster appears somewhere on the disc, and info about upcoming releases (some of which have been in development for a year and a half) litters the liner notes. Master P himself makes his presence felt only because the formula MP da Last Don follows is one he invented. If you've ever heard a No Limit record, you'll know what to expect -- cribbed hooks, predictable bass grooves and drum loops, the standard gangsta lyrical clichés. The law of averages dictates that there will be a few passable tracks on an album this size, but there is no variety here at all -- you could start the album at any point and feel like you've heard it all before. So, Da Last Don isn't a grand final statement from Master P, though its crass commercialism and blatant hucksterism offers as accurate a summation of Master P's career as anyone could hope.