So What's the Rap on The New Neighbor?

Suburban living doesn't get much better than the Country Club of Louisiana, a steel-gated, pool-dappled subdivision on the outskirts of Baton Rouge. Houses cost from $300,000 to $3 million. There is a lovely golf and tennis club with a spacious veranda meant to re-create the look of a Louisiana plantation. But denizens were somewhat unnerved last year to learn that five of the leading gangsta rappers in the world had moved in: Master P, C-Murder, Silkk the Shocker, Mystikal and Snoop Dogg.

The rappers' multiplatinum recordings celebrate gunfights, misogyny and the crack trade. And their transfer to Baton Rouge, as noted in the latest issue of the New Republic, is a corporate decision by Master P, 29, ne Percy Miller. The Louisiana native moved his No Limit Records from locations in Los Angeles and New Orleans last year and is building a large recording studio. No Limit is the nation's top-grossing rap label, with more than $200 million in revenues, and Master P runs a multifaceted empire that dabbles in everything from toys to film to travel. The $56.5 million he earned last year from the company and his own rap recordings ranks him 10th on Forbes' list of the highest-paid entertainers, ahead of Garth Brooks and the Spice Girls. The other rappers are part of No Limit's stable of stars.

So far, however, they have been denied membership at the golf club at the Country Club of Louisiana. The reason? "It's just plain racism," says No Limit's general counsel, Edwin Hawkins. "What other reason could it be?" (The golf club has other African-American members.) Hawkins says the chilly reception has extended to everything from the "300% premiums" they are being charged to build their new recording studio to a flurry of business-related lawsuits against them. "We don't feel," he says, "that we have been received as citizens of the community."

It did not help that C-Murder (P's brother Corey Miller) was arrested in March after speeding, carrying a pistol in his waistband and wearing body armor (he later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of illegally carrying a firearm) or that in June, P's bodyguard was briefly detained for failing to check two semiautomatic pistols before boarding a commercial flight.

But that kind of news no longer fazes P's neighbors. "I thought for sure we might see some white flight," says one. "But most of the time we barely know they're there. They send their kids to the local private schools. They're just like everyone else." In fact, instead of flight, residents are holding on to property. Says a local real estate agent: "There are fewer houses for sale than at any other time in the past five years."

In the beginning, it was neighborhood kids who pestered the celebs for autographs. However, says the neighbor, P and his friends and family "can now go to the community park and play baseball, and nobody bothers them." P told TIME, "I know some of the neighbors felt threatened at first, but I think people have eased up a lot since they've gotten to know us."

P is pushing his good-neighbor policy beyond the gates of the Country Club. He has provided scholarships to Baton Rouge students (and $25,000 to the local Boy Scouts), given equipment to schools and handed out Thanksgiving turkeys and winter coats. He has also given talks on the importance of staying in school and avoiding drugs and violence.

But it is the violence in his lyrics that makes it difficult even for people who like him to take his money. The Young Leaders Academy, which mentors fatherless children, decided it could not. "I have tremendous respect for his work ethic," says president Kirt Bennett. "But if we take his money, we are giving tacit approval to violence, misogyny and a whole lot of negatives." P sees a double standard. "If it's a Steven Seagal movie, they have no trouble separating the man and the message. But if it's rap, they take it personally. They try to make us look like bad guys." He makes a prediction: "The truth will still come out. We're doing a lot for the community."