This Years Forbes Top Five

Hip-Hop’s Wealthiest Artists

The five men who made the Forbes Five Hip-Hop’s Wealthiest Artists list have all clearly worked hard to achieve their riches.

Taking the money they have earned from hip hop and flipping it into other ventures like Ciroc for Diddy, or Jay-Z’s 40/40 clubs or 50 Cent’s Cheetah Vision Films has allowed these gentlemen to go from the hood to the boardroom.

The Forbes Top 5 Multi Millionaires In Hip Hop

Check out the full list below.

1. Diddy ($475 million)
2. Jay-Z ($450 million)
3. Dr. Dre ($125 million)
4. 50 Cent ($100 million)
5. Birdman ($100 million)

I think 50 is worth probably 4 times what this list indicates, but check out the criteria they listed to come to these figures.

In order to form the list, we followed the same procedures we use to calculate the list of the world’s billionaires (released today) — valuing current holdings, looking at past earnings, leafing through financial documents and talking to a bevy of analysts, attorneys, managers and other industry players to find the nitty-gritty details. We considered only performers, which is why hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons isn’t on this list.

Though other hip-hop artists including Lil Wayne, Pharrell Williams and others — not to mention pop sensation Bruno Mars, who penned Travie McCoy’s hit song “Billionaire” — frequently speak of ten-figure desires, we kept our list to five because of the lack of information available on the fortunes under $100 million.

Checckout 2008s Forbes List, shows how far they have come within the last 3 years:

1. Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson: $150 million
2. Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter: $82 million
3. Sean “Diddy” Combs: $35 million
4. Kanye West: $30 million
5. Timothy “Timbaland” Mosley: $22 million
6. Pharrell Williams: $20 million
7. Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean: $17 million
8. Calvin “Snoop Dogg” Broadus: $16 million
9. André “Dr. Dre” Young: $15 million
10. Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges: $14 million
11. Clifford “T.I.” Harris: $13 million (tie)
12. Dwayne “Lil Wayne” Carter: $13 million (tie)
13. Marshall “Eminem” Mathers: $12 million (tie)
14. Lonnie “Common” Lynn Jr.: $12 million (tie)
15. Aliaune “Akon” Thiam: $12 million (tie)
16. Jermaine Dupri: $11 million (tie)
17. Jonathan “Lil Jon” Smith: $11 million (tie)
18. OutKast: $10 million (tie)
19. Hakeem “Chamillionaire” Seriki: $10 million (tie)
20. Jayceon “The Game” Taylor: $10 million (tie)

What’s your take on the list, do you think it’s accurate?