Kanye West named highest-paid rapper; Cardi B questions Forbes' list
Kanye West has dethroned Jay-Z as the highest-paid hip-hop artist. On Thursday, Forbes released its annual list of World's 20 Top-Earning Hip-Hop Stars, which placed Kanye at the top. Forbes estimates Kanye's earnings at $150 million. Last year, the top spot was held by 49-year-old rapper Jay-Z, who slipped to #2 with $81 million estimated earnings. Here are more details.
Notably, Kanye's earnings are largely because of his Adidas Yeezy line, which is expected to top $1.5 billion in sales this year, "boosting his pretax income to $150 million over the past year and making him hip-hop's cash king for the first time ever."
After Kanye and Jay-Z, Drake ($75 million) is the third highest-paid hip-hop artist. The list continues with Diddy ($70 million) at No. 4, Travis Scott ($58 million) at No. 5, Eminem ($50 million) at No. 6, DJ Khaled ($40 million) at No. 7, Kendrick Lamar ($38.5 million) at No. 8, Migos ($36 million) at No. 10, and Childish Gambino ($35 million) at No. 10.
However, rapper Cardi B, who took the 13th spot with $28 million claimed that the Forbes' list was "way off." The 26-year-old tweeted, "Where do Forbes be getting they numbers from cause they way off?" She was joined by rapper Meek Mill, who tweeted. "The Forbes got our accounts f**ked up lol." Mill is ranked 15th on the list with $21 million earnings.
Now, the earnings reported in the list represent pretax income between June 2018-June 2019 before deducting fees for agents, managers, and lawyers. Forbes stated, "Figures are based on data from Nielsen Music, Pollstar, Bandsintown, and interviews with experts, handlers and some of the stars themselves."
Last year, Jay-Z had dethroned three-time highest-paid hip-hop artist Diddy from the Forbes list with $76.5 million estimated earnings. Diddy had slipped to the second spot with $64 million earnings. Interestingly, Kanye was ranked way down at the tenth spot last year, with estimated earnings of $27.5 million. Drake ($47 million), on the other hand, was ranked fourth, rising by one rank this year.
Coming to Kanye, his last album Ye came out last year with seven songs. It opened at No. 1 on Billboard's chart and according to Nielsen, it had 180 million streams and sold 85,000 copies as a full album. Last month, Kim Kardashian, Kanye's wife, teased his upcoming album 'Jesus is King' along with the tracklist. The album will be released on September 27.
