‘Ice Cream Man’: the meaning behind Master P’s classic album title
After years of plugging away and releasing music, it was Master P’s fifth album, 1996’s Ice Cream Man, that really put him on the map. Expectations for the album had been moderate, but it proved a hit.
P was born and raised in New Orleans, and it was his childhood days there that inspired his hit album’s title. As he told XXL in 2016, 20 years after its release, ice cream was one of his favourite snacks as a kid, which meant he was “always running to the ice cream truck and getting an ice cream cone.”
That’s the more innocent angle to the whole ice cream thing behind the album’s title, but there’s a grittier ice cream association for P, too. Learning from his cousins and other people on the streets, the young P learned how to hustle — which could draw unwanted attention from the police.
P claimed he was a fast runner as a kid, which came in handy when forced to flee from the cops. One time, as he was doing that, he was apparently almost hit by an ice cream truck, which is another reason why the idea of the frozen snack always stuck with him.
But more importantly, the young Master P seemed to idolise his local ice cream man in some way. This guy was, in P’s recollection, “the cleanest guy to come in the neighborhood. He wore a little white suit and he had a big truck, so I said I’m gonna take it to another level.”
What P meant by taking it “to another level” was that he had been so inspired by the ice cream man as a child, enamoured by his white suit and big truck, that he was going to borrow from his aesthetic — but go further with it. So, presenting himself as the “Ice Cream Man,” P started dressing in “white Dickie suits.”
In comparison to his rap contemporaries, who largely wore black suits at the time, Master P wanted to glow. “I’m going white,” he said of his fashion sense at the time. “I’m about to brighten the whole thing up. And that’s where ‘Ice Cream Man’ comes from.”
P appreciated that some people thought his style at the time was “crazy,” but he stuck by it. He thought it represented his desires in those days, which was to make cash on his own terms. “I wasn’t in the gangs,” he said. “I wasn’t a blood or crip or nothin’. I was just about gettin’ money, about the ice cream.”
P set up his own label, No Limit Records, in 1991, so he liked to think of himself as his own boss. This, at its core, was what inspired his obsession with becoming the Ice Cream Man. To be an ice cream man is to be your own boss, to run your own affairs without relying on anyone else to help you out.