Another year is in the books, and Forbes has released it’s annual “Hip-Hop Cash Kings” list. As expected, coming off the monster $3 billion deal with Apple, Dr. Dre and his Beats By Dre brand take the top spot with an unheard of $620 million. A figure that’s higher than the remaining 24 names, combined!
JAY Z and Diddy (last year’s king) round out the Top 3 with $60 million earned.
The Hip-Hop Cash Kings list tracks pretax earnings for living artists whose work is primarily classified as hip-hop or rap. To form the list, we considered income from touring, record sales, publishing, merchandise sales, endorsements and other ventures. Management, agent and attorney fees are not deducted. Earnings are calculated from June 2013 to June 2014 and based on data from Pollstar, the RIAA and Nielsen SoundScan, and from interviews with numerous managers, lawyers, music executives and some of the artists themselves.
01 Dr. Dre – $620 million
02 Jay Z – $60 million
02 Diddy – $60 million
04 Drake – $33 million
05 Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – $32 million
06 Kanye West – $30 million
07 Birdman – $24 million
08 Lil Wayne – $23 million
09 Pharrell Williams – $22 million
10 Eminem – $18 million
11 Nicki Minaj – $14 million
12 Wiz Khalifa – $13 million
13 Pitbull – $12 million
14 Snoop Dogg – $10 million
15 Kendrick Lamar – $9 million
16 Ludacris – $8 million
16 Tech N9ne – $8 million
16 Swizz Beatz – $8 million
16 50 Cent – $8 million
20 Rick Ross – $7 million
20 J. Cole – $7 million
20 DJ Khaled – $7 million
20 Lil Jon – $7 million
20 Mac Miller – $7 million
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