Kanye West Making It Big

The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t been nice to a lot of people, financially speaking, but one person who definitely isn’t hurting is Kanye West. A couple of weeks ago, he finally managed to bust his way onto Forbes magazine’s elite list of billionaires, joining Jay-Z as the only other hip-hop artist on that list - and, in fact, making more than the older artist. 

This is a big milestone, as Kanye has insisted for a while that he belongs on that list, and was actually pissed at Forbes for not including him sooner. He’s even gone so far in the past as to claim that he’s worth $3 billion. When he finally decided to share his financial records with the magazine so they could check out his claims for themselves, they found that that estimate was a little over the top. But he wasn’t wrong about being a billionaire. Forbes’ investigation found that Kanye West’s net worth is in fact around $1.3 billion, to be exact.

Breaking It Down

But what does that even mean? Is Yeezus literally swimming through piles of gold, Scrooge McDuck-style, in a vault somewhere in his Calabasas mansion? Well - not exactly. “Net worth” is kind of a complex thing. It’s more than just the cash someone has on hand, and includes the value of things like business ventures, real estate and other expensive toys. So here’s a breakdown of some of the stuff going into that $1.3 billion figure:

Cars: They say you gotta spend money to make money, and that’s definitely true with Kanye. If you own a pricey car, then you’ve got that much more potential money available if you decide to sell it - so it increases your overall worth. Although it’s hard to be sure exactly which whips Kanye has in the garage, these are probably a few of them -

○     Bugatti Veyron, worth a colossal $3.54 million

○     Dartz Prombron, Red Diamond Edition - one of the most expensive SUVs in the world at $2.2 million

○     Mercedes SLR McLaren - about $300,000

○     Aston Martin DB9 - about $200,000

○     Lamborghini Gallardo - between $190,000 - $250,000

○     And let’s not forget the neon-green Mercedes G-Wagon that he surprised Kim with a couple years ago - worth around $240,000.

Real estate: Along with his other talents and ambitions, Kanye apparently also wants to be a superstar real estate developer - “what Howard Hughes was to aircrafts and Henry Ford was to cars,” as he puts it. That goal may still be far away, but with these properties in his portfolio, he’s off to a good start -

○     The Hidden Hills mansion that he and Kim and their kids call home - worth around $40 million.

○     A ranch-style property, also in Hidden Hills, worth $2.98 million

○     300 acres of land in the neighboring area of Calabasas, price unknown.

○     Not one, but two Wyoming ranches, each worth around $14 million.

Yeezy: Far and away the biggest asset is Kanye’s line of footwear, which has become so successful that it’s now giving Air Jordan a run for its money. How Yeezy’s value crosses over into Kanye’s net worth is complicated, but it breaks down kind of like this:

○     Although the brand is released through Adidas, Kanye is its sole owner and entitled to a nice chunk of royalties from its sales - around 11%.

○     Yeezy sold $1.3 billion worth of shoes last year, which meant around $140 million in royalties for Kanye.

○     However, his ownership stake in the company also multiplies that amount by a factor of about 10, for a total of $1.4 billion.

○     Forbes then chopped off 10% of that estimate for safety, leaving a total amount of $1.26 billion from Yeezy coming to Kanye himself. Damn.

Summing It Up

Adding all this stuff together, along with at least $90 million from his music and recording label, comes to about $1.4 billion. But a big spender like Kanye definitely has debts too - around $100 million worth - bringing his net worth, finally, to that $1.3 billion figure. Less than he claimed at first, sure. But still gigantic.

Moral of the story - rap can make you money, sure. But it’s gonna take a bit more than that to make you a billionaire. So if you want to someday make it into Forbes’ elite club yourself, be sure to have another side hustle or two going while you work on your demo tracks. ‘Cause somebody is gonna have to take Kanye’s place on the throne someday.