In anticipation of the 2010 VH1 Hip Hop Honors: The Dirty South, which airs on June 7, Complex and Miss Info have teamed with the network to celebrate this year's honorees with exclusive coverage.

Master P was nothing if not a visionary. After toiling in the West Coast underground for years and achieving moderate success, P moved back to his birthplace of New Orleans and scooped up the finest rap talent the city had to offer. He repackaged them (in an assembly line fashion that would have made Berry Gordy proud) and sold his new sound back to young America. Though No Limit wasn't the first Southern label to gain national attention, they proved to be the most influential of the region's breakthrough acts, setting both a business model and an aesthetic for the artists and labels that followed. P brought Louisiana hip-hop to the radio and lined the racks of Sam Goodys everywhere with blindingly blingish Pen N Pixel covers, releasing well over 100 albums during a relatively short reign. Though the label fizzled by the early part of the century (with most of the label's core roster ending up dead, in jail, or on Nickelodeon), the catalog and legacy still stands, a reminder of a time when the phrase "ugghhh" still had meaning. In preparation for the VH1 Hip-Hop Honors, Complex looks back at 25 of The Tank's greatest shots...

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