Jay Z: the urban Shakespeare who became hip-hop’s first billionaire
Shawn Carter, aka Jay-Z, has always displayed a talent not just for rhyme, but for making money too – he was hip-hop’s first billionaire. He hasn’t lost his touch, says Jane Lewis

“Put me anywhere on God’s green Earth, I’ll triple my worth.” Hip-hop’s first billionaire has such a talent for rhymes that he was once described as “America’s urban Shakespeare”. Jay-Z clearly hasn’t lost his touch for insouciant moneymaking either, as a busy month of disposals demonstrates. The musician and entrepreneur sold 50% of his $640m champagne brand, Armand de Brignac, to the world’s leading luxury group LVMH, which has undertaken to expand the brand globally. Oatly, the Swedish vegan-milk group in which he is invested, took its first step towards a $10bn initial public offering (IPO). And now, notes Forbes, Jay-Z has bagged $297m from a deal to sell his majority share in the music-streaming company Tidal to Jack Dorsey’s mobile-payment company Square.
The rhyming advocates of luxury
If Jay-Z is streamlining his investments, it may be part of a wider stock-taking. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the musician-entrepreneur’s first album, Reasonable Doubt, which was released on his own Roc-A-Fella Records label and marked the start of a business and rap career that have been entwined ever since. Jay-Z has “poured his talent and wealth into so many ventures that it is easy to lose track”, says the Financial Times. He was “ahead of his time in business in a way that is only now clear”. Every Instagram influencer “owes something to the performative consumption pioneered by hip-hop” artists, the original “rhyming advocates of luxury”. Jay-Z learnt early “that a celebrity could not only be paid to perform songs or endorse products but might also own the rights to both”.
“The rapper’s character is essentially a conceit, a first-person literary creation,” Jay-Z once observed. But in the beginning, his main driver was self-sufficiency. Born Shawn Carter in 1969, he grew up in 1980s Brooklyn, then “infested with crack cocaine”, says The Guardian. “We came out of a generation of black people who finally got the point: no one’s going to help us…Not even our fathers stuck around,” Jay-Z wrote in his autobiography, Decoded. “Success [meant] being a boss, not a dependent.” Nicknamed Jay-Z when he was a kid (it was a riff on Brooklyn’s J and Z subway lines), Shawn was a clever boy who adapted to survive. Beginning at the age of 12 – the year he shot his older brother in the shoulder for stealing a ring – he spent 14 years “hustling on the streets” to support his family during the crack epidemic. It was a time, he later said, when “children became parents and parents became children”.
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Rich material in a troubled past
Jay-Z began rapping on street corners in his teens. But his big break came in the mid-1990s when he met a pair of youthful impresarios – Kareem “Biggs” Burke and Damon Dash – who put up the cash to record his songs. Times were so tight that Dash pressed the discs himself, selling them from his car. But Reasonable Doubt went platinum, and since then Jay-Z has sold more than 50 million albums globally. During these formative years it was Dash who established the Roc-A-Fella empire, which eventually came to encompass clothes (Rocawear), beauty products, music publishing and entertainment (Roc Nation). But Jay-Z gradually bought him out. “I’m not a businessman; I’m a business, man” is a favourite aphorism. His long-standing marriage to Beyoncé Knowles, the most successful female artist of the 2000s, is a case in point. Music’s leading “power couple” have won critical acclaim – and sold millions of albums – charting the ups and downs of their relationship.
Asked to name his influences in 2010, the rapper joked that “the closest person you could compare me to is Joe Kennedy…He started as a bootlegger! Ahaha! They say behind every great fortune is a great crime… I believe it.” Jay-Z has always found rich material in his troubled past, but it was clear even then that he was “the boy from the hood who turned out good”, says The Guardian. A decade on, not much has changed.
Get the latest financial news, insights and expert analysis from our award-winning MoneyWeek team, to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.
She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.
Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.
She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.
-
Accelerating state pension age hikes could cost Brits in early 50s almost £18,000
A recently launched review of the state pension age has sparked concern that the planned increases could be accelerated. How much could it cost you?
-
How to invest according to your age - the one rule everyone can follow
Whether you’re a seasoned investor or new to the game, here’s the one investing rule to help determine how much you should invest according to your age
-
Mira Murati: a trailblazer in AI goes it alone
Mira Murati fled OpenAI to set up her start-up, Thinking Machines Lab. The firm just raised a record $2bn in a seed funding round and has grand ambitions
-
Ozzy Osbourne: the working-class Brummie who became heavy metal royalty
Black Sabbath's frontman Ozzy Osborne, the people's 'Prince of Darkness', has died aged 76
-
Alexandr Wang: the AI wunderkind who takes his seat at Meta
Alexandr Wang became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire by exploiting a niche in the AI market. Now Mark Zuckerberg has poached him for a record sum
-
Zohran Mamdani wows New York – what did the mayoral candidate get right?
Zohran Mamdani, 33, has won the Democratic candidacy to be mayor of New York. That has energised his supporters and enemies alike – and terrified the rich
-
The true nature of economic growth
Opinion The feds making a number go up is one thing; true economic growth is quite another, says Bill Bonner
-
Anna Wintour: fashion’s ice queen steps down as Vogue editor-in-chief
Anna Wintour is quitting her role as editor-in-chief of American Vogue following a near-four-decade reign. But true to form, she will not be relinquishing control entirely.
-
Tracy Anderson: the fitness guru to the stars
American fitness entrepreneur Tracy Anderson counts Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna among her clients, and she has built a personal fortune estimated at $110 million. Can she stop the copycats?
-
Xi Jinping masters “The Art of the Stall”
China’s Xi Jinping appears to have played his hand well in the face of hostility and threats from Donald Trump. But at home, his position may not be as secure as it seems.