Dr. Dre The First Rap Billionaire
Being a hip-hop/rap fanatic, I was actually surprised to hear that Dr. Dre has just become the first rapper billionaire. I had actually thought it was achieved long ago. Dr. Dre has apparently become a billionaire simply because Apple is buying up all of his Beats By Dre products, but that's not where it started. If you go back to the beginning, my guess would be that the Beastie Boys would have become the first billionaires in the rap industry, being that their first album, License To Ill, was and still is the best selling rap album in history. Behind them, Run DMC. They were HUGE back in the day and were around for a long span of time. The same goes for Snoop Dogg. In a world of overpayed celebrities, it's a shock to me that, out of all the famous rappers around the world, Dr. Dre would be the first rap billionaire. He has somehow paved the way for many other rap artists too. Ice Cube went on to become a movie actor. Mac Miller has his own T.V. show. So does Riff Raff. Inspired by Beats By Dre, Snoop Dogg released a line of high end headphones, but without the amount of success. Chance The Rapper, while he just recently broke through the underground into the mainstream, is ALWAYS on tour. I don't know how much a rap artist gets payed monthly and I know it's dependent on how many shows they play and the amount of tickets they sell, etc., but I thought it wouldn't take that long to rack up a huge amount of money. Especially if you're Dr. Dre and started your career more than 20 years ago with NWA.
"The first billionaire in hip hop, right here from the motherf----n West Coast," Dre says.""But estimating Dre's net worth is difficult, given that Beats is privately held. Beats did not immediately respond to a request for comment."
According to various reports, he holds a stake of between 20% and 25% following a $500 million investment last year from private equity firm The Carlyle Group, which was said to have valued the company at around $1 billion."
"Forbes pegged Dr. Dre's net worth last month at $550 million. Let's assume he does own 25% of Beats. That stake would have been worth $250 million before the Apple deal chatter, leaving Dre with about $300 million from other investments and ventures, such as his music career.
If Apple does purchase Beats for $3.2 billion, then Dre's presumed 25% stake would be worth $800 million. Add that to his $300 million in non-Beats assets and the rapper would be worth $1.1 billion."
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