Great thread.
I always thought Mac was the truth, he actually turned down a Def Jam deal to sign with NL exclusively. I thought Shell Shocked was a great album but like you said the latter part of that album had a lot of underwhelming cuts. Shouldn't have been 21 tracks, if he had cut that down to maybe 13, it would be contender for the best album on the tank.
But that seemed like a NL motto, all their albums had atleast 17 cuts or more. C-Murder first two albums had 26 tracks a piece I believe.
I remember around late 99 and I hadn't been in Dallas that long off and on and NL came to the starplex in south dallas. My older brother who was in the industry started doing street team work for NL all through northern Louisiana(shrevport, Monroe) and texas. I got to be behind the scenes for the first time that night.
Mercedes was fine as fukk, everyone was there except Skull, Kane & abel, soulja slim. Got to chop it with Mac, Big Ed(dude was built like a fukkin NFL LB), Snoop, and everyone. They also had some super short midget esq looking dude name Lit Italy. But the thing that ALWAYS stuck out to me was C-Murder.
I don't what happen but he got mad at some member of the crew and he just lashed out and got to cursing, and just belittling the dude and the guy just stood there and took it. You could hear a damn needle drop and I saw P try to calm him down and he went off on him too. I said to myself as a teen that nikka was crazy.
I saw them all again in NO, and every dude was shining driving beamers and benzes. My older bro has mad stories about NL, but my biggest take away was P tried to be the "anti suge knight". He moved from Richmond and gave a lot of dudes opportunities and gave them 100% creative control on their projects.
Granted he took their publishing but they got frontloaded signing bonuses and points on their albums which meant a lot of dough considering even underperforming albums still sold 100-300k pre piracy and P had a 85-15% deal with priority so P still has a lot of old money and his artist ate. Some managed their money well while others didn't...