{Six years ago Dr. Dre was walking along the beach with Interscope Records chief Jimmy Iovine, pondering whether or not he should launch his own shoe line. \u201c[Forget] sneakers,\u201d said Iovine. \u201cLet\u2019s sell speakers!\u201d
\n}<\/p>\n
It might have been the best piece of advice the rapper-producer ever received. In 2008 he teamed with Iovine and a handful of other partners to launch Beats By Dr. Dre, which now sells more than half of the country\u2019s premium headphones ($100 and up). That\u2019s music to the ears of Dr. Dre, who collected $100 million pretax when handset maker HTC paid $300 million for a 51% stake in the company last year.<\/p>\n
With $110 million in pretax earnings, Dr. Dre is this year\u2019s Hip-Hop Cash King\u2014despite the fact that his long-awaited album, Detox, remains on the shelf. He\u2019s not the only one on the list who banks the bulk of his bucks outside the recording studio. Diddy ranks No. 2 with $45 million, thanks mostly to a share of profits from Diageo\u2019s Ciroc vodka; Jay-Z ranks third with $38 million, pulling in more than half his annual earnings from ventures including ownership stakes in cosmetics company Carol\u2019s Daughter, the Brookyln Nets and a joint venture with battery maker Duracell (for more, check out my Jay-Z biography, Empire State of Mind).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality of it is, you want to do something that you own,\u201d says frequent Jay-Z collaborator Timbaland, who ranks No. 20 on the list with $6 million. \u201cYou want to own what you put your heart into. That\u2019s how you make money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kanye West ranks fourth on the list with $35 million, fueled by his Watch the Throne album with Jay-Z and the ensuing tour, followed by Lil Wayne at $27 million. The diminutive rhymester\u2019s latest album, Tha Carter IV, sold a million copies in its first week; he also launched clothing line Trukfit and a partnership with Pepsi\u2019s Mountain Dew, the first major product endorsement in the veteran rapper\u2019s career.<\/p>\n
Lil Wayne is joined on the Cash Kings list by labelmates Drake (No. 6) and Nicki Minaj (No. 8), who banked $20.5 million and $15.5 million, respectively, thanks to new albums, tours and product endorsements with companies like Kodak and Pepsi. Their boss, Cash Money co-founder Bryan \u201cBirdman\u201d Williams, ranks seventh with $20 million. Even lower down on the list, artists are getting paid considerable sums to shill products.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve received a lot of income based around endorsements,\u201d says former Def Jam President Kevin Liles, who now manages a host of artists including No. 18 Young Jeezy. \u201cA lot of brands are saying, \u2018Hey, there\u2019s a value proposition, instead of this freewheeling spending \u2026 I have some guaranteed curators and travel agents that can help me reach the consumer in a better way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet for a few artists, music alone is a viable path to earning millions. No. 9 Eminem sold more albums last decade than any artist, and continues to cash in from his extensive back catalog and occasional tour dates, pulling in $15 million.<\/p>\n
Ludacris rounds out the top ten with earnings of $12 million (for more, see \u201cLudacris Dreams: A Rap Mogul Diversifies\u201d). The multihyphenate mogul\u2019s non-musical ventures include Conjure cognac, headphone line Soul, voiceovers for RadioShack and roles in movies such as Fast Five and New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe work so hard that we never get a real chance to stop and reflect on what we\u2019ve done sometimes,\u201d says Ludacris. \u201cSo the FORBES list is a great representation of, \u2018You know what, wow, we are out here working as hard as hell!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
To compile the Cash Kings list, which charts pretax earnings for all living artists whose work is primarily classified as hip-hop or rap, we looked at income from touring, record sales, publishing, films, merchandise sales, endorsements and other ventures. Management, agent and attorney fees are not deducted; earnings are tabulated from May 2011 to May 2012 and based on data from Pollstar, the Recording Industry Association of America and Nielsen SoundScan, and from interviews with numerous managers, lawyers, record executives and some of the artists themselves.<\/p>\n
All in all, hip-hop\u2019s top 20 earners pulled in $415 million last year, the most since 2008\u2019s $515 million. The more recent total got a heavy boost from Dr. Dre\u2019s impressive haul, but it doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s resting on his financial laurels. Earlier this summer, he and his partners bought back half of the 51% stake in Beats that they sold to HTC nearly a year ago\u2014meaning that fans waiting for his new album might have to hold out a little longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand why Dre didn\u2019t finish Detox,\u201d says Liles, with a laugh. \u201cIt\u2019s called Beats.\u201d<\/p>\n
{{Forbes}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Six years ago Dr. Dre was walking along the beach with Interscope Records chief Jimmy Iovine, pondering whether or not he should launch his own shoe line. \u201c[Forget] sneakers,\u201d said Iovine. \u201cLet\u2019s sell speakers!\u201d } It might have been the best piece of advice the rapper-producer ever received. In 2008 he teamed with Iovine and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-3112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3112"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=3112"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=3112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}