No Limit Soldiers
People wanna know what "No Limit" comes from. My grandfather, Big Daddy, was in the military. And, uh, you know, he always said, "Man, them people ain't gon' do nothing for us." So he was like,"Grandson, you need to start your own army." And that's where the tanks and the military thing come from...My grandfather, he said, 'Why you gon' call it "No Limit"?" I said, "Because I don't have no limit to what I could do." - Master P
There’s no way I could spend all this time talking about this exhibit without mentioning the one and only Master P in his own section. I mean, he’s literally 90% of the interludes across the final project and A Seat at the Table. Without him, there really is no project, because Solange has arranged her tracks across both albums so that the interludes become integral to the full listening experience.
For those that don’t know Master P, aka Percy Robert Miller (Cymphonique and Romeo Miller’s dad—iykyk), is a NOLA rapper who rose to fame in the 90s and is the founder of No Limit Records, a record label built from the ground up.
He started No Limit from absolutely nothing, and every record label in the industry came to him with multi-million-dollar deals, and he constantly spoke about self-empowerment, and not giving yourself to the highest bidder, and having the foresight and the rebellion to own that and to stand firm. Especially at that time, for a black man, it was just really, really mind-blowing to me […] He’s a hero. - Solange
His importance to Solange and A Seat at the Table comes from his position as one of (if not the) first person Solange saw put themselves and their Blackness at the fore. She says,
Once I had these ideas of someone who really, really exhibited black empowerment and independence. I couldn’t think of anyone who was more fitting than Master P. He’s someone I’ve always had a great deal of admiration for. I asked him to come in and speak for this one song, and he ended up being the most incredible storyteller. - Solange
As her hero, his contributions to the project can’t be overstated. He brings a particular energy to the album that makes his words really stick. When placed beside Richards, we realize that he is absolutely right: there is no limit to what we can do when we lean into the creative process.
In being creative, we also force ourselves to be brave, to be bold. In Master P’s context, centering takes on multiple meanings at once, putting poetry into practice and allowing storytelling to give the project real weight. Richards says that
poetry is truth [...] But it doesn’t invent the truth. It too must listen, to the poetry that flows inaudibly beneath all speech. So it is difficult to use words and yet to invoke the sense of life which is unspoken, unspeakable, what is left after the books are all decayed, lost, burned, forgotten. What remains after the pot has disappeared. - Richards
Master P found the poetry in his history and, through his craft (hip hop), molded it into a centering narrative. He grounded himself through his ability to create and sing his “battle cry,” to rewrite his present and future (taking a different path than his parents/grandparents, and even other artists in the industry who would’ve taken the million dollars he was offered).
His boldness in doing so clearly helped to center Solange and, in turn, has centered this project. We can see as much throughout, especially in segments 4 and 11.
To say that you and what you create are limitless is to show that resistance must be an intentional and active process that starts with a single individual and, through their work, becomes an example for others to follow. This is centering.
To be a No Limit Soldier is to operate in authenticity and independence, to lean into community and let your art speak for itself.
