Your Favorite Rapper is Poor: The 10 Richest Rappers Edition

Sorry for the "Your Favorite Rapper is Poor" hiatus, but I've been...um...let's say "busy" getting RefinedHype's other most popular series up and running. I promise from now on we'll be digging back into the pockets of rappers around the world, and what better way to do it than with a Top Ten Richest Rappers list?

That was a rhetorical question. There is no better way.

In our last post I detailed how, tellingly, even the biggest hip-hop artists are relative paupers when placed next to their music industry peers. Sure Jay and Diddy make a lot of money, but U2 clears in one tour what Hova makes in a year. The lesson? If you want that big, big money, quit hip-hop and starting doing pop/rock/country/etc. You know, some genre where you can ink an endorsement deal with Target.

But luckily for our purposes, Forbes decided to take it a step further and last week got a little more specific, listing the top ten highest earning artists in hip-hop (earning take into account music sales, touring, other business ventures, etc). Before we go any further, here's the list.

1. Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter - $63 Million
2. Sean "Diddy" Combs - $30 million
3. Aliuane "Akon" Thiam - $21 million
4. Dwayne "Lil Wayne" Carter - $20 million
5. Andre "Dr. Dre" Young - $17 million
6. Christopher "Ludacris" Bridges - $16 million
7. Calvin "Snoop Dogg" Broadus - $15 million
8. Timothy "Timbaland" Mosley - $14 million
9. Pharrell Williams - $13 million
10. Kanye West - $12 million

Ok, so what can we learn from that list. One, every single person on there either has their own label. As I laid out in the very first edition of Rapper is Poor, labels take an obscene cut of an artists revenues, so not only do there guys avoid divvying their money up, but even better, they get to take obscene cuts from the artists in the label! Hey, either you're a big dog, or a big dog's taking your lunch. There is no in between.

Second, everyone here has ventures outside of their own solo spotlight. Some, like Kanye and Pharrell, produce, which unless you're producing for Cash Money, can pay serious dividends over time. Hell, I'm sure the royalties he gets from producing Justin Timberlake's last album alone are enough to pay Timbo's house note. But the real big players control their own companies, companies that are mainstream enough to ink major endorsement deals with other companies. As I said before, it's that ad campaign with Target that buys you a private jet. Forbes actually has a great article on this about Snoop's transition from the streets to the boardroom, a transition which has obviously paid dividends.

In other words, there are no real surprises here. Soulja Boy can wear all the pretty boy swag he wants, but until he builds himself from an artist to a company, he'll never be a financial heavyweight. And now some random observations.

* It's no surprise that Jay is number one, but sweet jesus he's number one by a huge margin. He's absolutely crushing Diddy, just crushing him. And if you think that doesn't deeply bother Diddy, than you don't know the man.

* On the other hand, I was a little surprised to see Akon that high. He's obviously raking it in via Konvict and his deals with the World Cup, etc., but he's got enough to land at number three? Really? Really? I did not see that coming. I bet most of its international money, which, by the way, is actual money. A lot of rappers make more in Europe than in the U.S., where the market's completely over-saturated.

* Also didn't expect to see Wayne that high up. He must be getting a larger share of Young Money/Cash Money than I thought. Given his history, I assumed Birdman was just basically stealing it all.

Next week I'm flipping the script and listing the Ten Rappers Who Are Secretly Poor - yep, I'm coming for you Damon Dash. Keep it locked.