Master P could reportedly be the new owner of Reebok. According to Forbes, Reebok’s parent company — Adidas — is planning to sell the shoe brand by March 2021. The outlet also writes that Master P and former NBA All-Star Baron Davis are among the brand’s interested buyers.
Reebok has joined forces with culture movers in hip hop on several occasions, like JAY-Z’s S. Carter shoes — which boosted company sales by 17 percent in 2004 — and more recent examples like Cardi B and Kendrick Lamar. However, Master P’s addition could expand the brand’s reach even further and shift ownership and opportunity to the community that helped make the shoes popular.
“As we focus on turning Reebok into a lifestyle brand not just a basketball brand, our most important initiative will be to put money back into the community that built this company,” the No Limit Records founder told Forbes.
Also speaking with the outlet, Davis reflected on the brand’s room for growth among professional athletes.
“I think Reebok is being undervalued,” he said. “I left Nike as a 22-year-old kid representing myself and made the jump to Reebok, which took a chance on me as a creative and as an athlete.”
“I want the people I know — athletes, influencers, designers [and] celebs — to sit at the table with me,” he added.
Forbes writes that Reebok will be sold for around $2.4 billion. According to Bloomberg, an official announcement about the purchase could come even sooner than March. The outlet reports that “the company will decide in the coming months” if the sale will move forward.
Although he’s widely known as a hip hop mogul, Master P has famously branched out into several other industries as a serial entrepreneur, most recently making his debut in the food industry with his PJ Foods Company. In August, Master P announced that he’d created alternatives to Uncle Ben’s rice and Aunt Jemima syrup — both of which made rebranding plans earlier this year amidst racial justice protests.
“When you look at Aunt Jemima and you look at Uncle Ben, we don’t own those products; we never did,” Master P explained to Yahoo! Finance at the time. “We need to understand that we’re not going to be able to put money back in our community because we don’t own those brands. Our grandparents [have] been having us buy those products because they think it’s people that look like us.”
“What we fighting for right now, we got to do it on a financial level and start fighting for those rights on the financial side and start showing people that we have people that are thinking outside the box — coming up with great ideas,” he added.