Source: @PhotosByBeanz / @PhotosByBeanz
The Blueprint has come to fruition.
According to a Forbes cover story released Monday, rap icon and entrepreneur Jay-Z has accumulated “a fortune that conservatively totals $1 billion,” making him the first hip-hop artist to do so. His fortune grew through a number of investments, including his Rocawear clothing brand, D’usse liquor, real estate, and of course, the music streaming service TIDAL.
In the report, Forbes spoke with longtime collaborator Swizz Beatz about how Jay-Z created a model for others to follow.
“It’s bigger than hip-hop … it’s the blueprint for our culture. A guy that looks like us, sounds like us, loves us, made it to something that we always felt that was above us.”
The seeds of Jay-Z’s billionaire dreams could go as far back with his 1996 debut Reasonable Doubt, in where he made a plan of wanting to build an empire off of rap after years of hustling in the Marcy projects. In the years that follow, he would make due on that promise, becoming more lucrative in his deals as well as his musical output. His last two solo albums, Magna Carta Holy Grail and 4:44, explicitly go into detail of his fascination of art and its monetary value as well as making financial investments that could build generational wealth.
A full list of the investments and primary holdings can be seen below, with the full description shown in the cover story:
Armand de Brignac champagne
$310 million
Cash & investments, including a stake in Uber worth an estimated $70 million
$220 million
D’Ussé cognac
$100 million
Tidal streaming service
$100 million
Roc Nation
$75 million
Music catalog
$75 million
Art collection
$70 million
Real estate
$50 million
Jay-Z recently announced that TIDAL will be hosting a number of live listening events for Prince’s Originals album on June 7.
The Blueprint: Jay-Z Becomes The First Rap Billionaire was originally published on cassiuslife.com
