The Top-Earning Hip-Hop Cash Kings Of The Last 10 Years

When FORBES published its first Hip-Hop Cash Kings list in 2007, Jay Z topped the genre’s high earners with $34 million, ahead of third-ranked Diddy ($28 million) and Dr. Dre (No. 5, $20 million). Ten years later, those three still comprise the top spots, though in 2016 each one more than doubled their dollar take-homes from 2007’s tally.

The Hip-Hop Cash Kings list, FORBES’ annual ranking of the genre’s top earners, has now been around for a full decade. In those 10 years, hip-hop has burgeoned into a full-fledged multibillion-dollar international business, with the top 20 annual earners pulling in a combined $4.5 billion pretax—an average of about $22.5 million per act per year.

The highest-earning hip-hop act of the last decade: Dr. Dre.  He accounted for one fifth of that cumulative total, banking $923 million pretax–and more than any other rap star–thanks largely to Apple AAPL +0.92%’s $3 billion Beats buyout in 2014. Jay Z is the genre’s second-ranked all-time earner, banking $501.5 million from diversified interests including his entertainment company Roc Nation, Armand de Brignac champagne and D’ussé cognac.

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“That was the greatest trick in music that people ever pulled off, to convince artists that you can’t be an artist and make money,” Jay Z told FORBES during a 2010 discussion with Warren Buffet, reprinted in full as part of our new eBook, Making the Forbes List: 10 Year of Hip-Hop Cash Kings. “People would get to a certain age and still try to pinpoint at this young demographic because hip-hop is a young man’s sport… I’m just going to make the music I love to make and I’m going to mature with my music.”

Diddy, who lands third on the highest-earning rappers of the last 10 years, hauled in $435 million in that period. Though he doesn’t earn much from music these days, Diddy makes up for it with an outrageously lucrative deal with Diageo’s Ciroc vodka, plus his TV network Revolt, Aquahydrate endorsement and Sean John clothing line.

“A lot of people think that I come in and out of places, studios, and yell at people telling them to get cheesecake,” Diddy told FORBES, speaking about what it’s like to work for him. “I won’t say that’s not [true], but the thing that’s real about me, and the thing that I hope inspires people, is I come from a neighborhood that you can relate to.”

Diddy and Jay Z’s ten-year tallies far outpaced other nine-figure earners like 50 Cent, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Drake, Snoop Dogg and Pharrell Williams. The fortunes of each are discussed in-depth in Making the Forbes List: 10 Year of Hip-Hop Cash Kings.

Our goal at FORBES over the past decade has been to give the business of hip-hop the dignified treatment it deserves, both by putting a Forbesian level of research into each pretax earnings estimate—we apply the same rigor to our annual earnings numbers for Cash Kings numbers (and our net worth totals published in the Forbes Five list)  that we do for the billionaire wealth numbers that appear in our flagship Forbes 400 issue—and by crafting magazine-quality features that we publish alongside the list.

In the process, FORBES became a household name in hip-hop. The publication’s name was mentioned in verse about once per year on average between 1991 and 2007, according to Genius (the first came courtesy of Del the Funky Homosapien: “Still gather papes like my man Malcolm Forbes”). Over the past ten years, the average amount of mentions has skyrocketed to 20 times per year, thanks to shout-outs from top acts like Hov (“Just call me Forbes.com”) and even fictional hip-hop moguls like Empire’s Hakeem Lyon (“I want the Forbes list”).

Now, after Dre, the next era belongs to young bucks forging their way in a changed industry, where streaming and touring are paramount. Independent rap lives on, even it forges distribution deals with Apple instead of a record label. (Chance the Rapper notable refused to put his 2016 Coloring Book project for sale, instead streaming it exclusively on Apple Music.)

Forget what you heard: There is still money to be made in music, be it live or streamed or elsewhere. As long as there is, FORBES will be here, reporting, writing and affording hip-hop the respect it deserves as a business—and culture.

The Forbes Five: Hip-Hop’s Wealthiest Artists 2016.

Drake once said he planned to make $250 million by the time he was 29. With less than a year left before he turns 30, he’s still got a ways to go. But the Toronto native is certainly on the right track: this year, he’s the first newcomer to crack the Forbes Five.

For years, our list of hip-hop’s wealthiest artists has been composed of the same five figures—Birdman, Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay Z and 50 Cent. But the latter spent his $100 million Vitaminwater windfall faster than we thought, and last summer’s bankruptcy filing knocked him off the list. Enter Drake—flush with cash from touring, music and deals with the likes of Nike NKE -0.98%, Sprite and Apple—at No. 5, with a net worth of $60 million.

“That’s pretty much my objective every year,” Drake once said of having his financial achievements acknowledged by FORBES. “Other than making good music.”

Still, it could take decades for Drake to ascend to the heights occupied by this year’s king: Diddy, who boasts a staggering fortune of $750 million, up slightly from last year.

The bulk of his bucks come from his agreement with Diageo’s Ciroc vodka; adding to his total are stakes in his TV network Revolt, clothing line Sean John, record label Bad Boy, tequila Deleon and alkaline water Aquahydrate.

Coming in a close second is Dr. Dre at $710 million, also up a tick from 2015. Two years ago the superproducer’s Beats By Dr. Dre sale got him the largest one-off payday of any living musician in history, and last year’s biopic Straight Outta Compton padded his coffers, too. He now sits on a nine-figure cash stash—and a jaw-dropping portfolio of Southern California real estate—that even a billionaire would envy.

Jay Z ranks third in the race to $1 billion; his net worth now stands at $610 million. The Brooklyn-born rapper boasts a broad range of holdings, but it’s his Tidal streaming service that made him this year’s biggest gainer on paper. The company has had its bumps, but with 3 million paid subscribers, it’s now worth an estimated three times more than its $56 million purchase price.

Cash Money chief Birdman ranks fourth with $110 million, down a tick from last year due to turmoil within his empire. Flagship artist Lil Wayne has slowed his once-frenetic release pace; rumors of his departure, along with fellow top acts Drake and Nicki Minaj, continue to swirl. That said, Drake’s latest album, Views, dropped just days ago via a smorgasbord of labels including Cash Money/Young Money, and a source close to the company says all three have multiple records left on their deals.

Full coverage: The Forbes Five

To compile the Forbes Five list, we follow the same procedures used to calculate our list of the world’s billionaires: looking at past earnings, valuing current holdings, leafing through real estate records and talking to analysts, attorneys, managers, venture capitalists and some of the moguls themselves to find the details.

One of these days, a member of our list is likely to become hip-hop’s first billionaire. Diddy certainly wouldn’t mind if it’s him.

“I’d be blessed to be a billionaire,” he told FORBES in 2013. “Hopefully someday it’ll come true and I’ll be able to do some good with it.”