At Howard University’s graduation ceremony, students got advice from a guest speaker unlike most given that honor: Sean Combs, or “P. Diddy,” a leading symbol of hip-hop artists turned businessmen.
Facing a sea of young people wearing blue gowns, the magnate of rap spoke on Saturday of the secret of his success.
“I decided to embrace the entrepreneur spirit of my dad, but in a honest way, in a legal way,” said Combs, whose father died in a drug deal gone wrong.
Sitting atop a personal fortune of US$700 million, “P. Diddy” is among a coterie of rapper businessmen who have gone from inner city streets to the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
The king of West Coast rap, Dr. Dre, could soon become hip-hop’s first billionaire, if a proposed sale of his headphone and music streaming company Beats to Apple goes through.
“It’s a great landmark. After all, it’s a deal with, by some measures, the greatest company in the world,” said Dan Charnas, author of the book The Big Payback. The History of the Business of Hip-Hop.
“But that would also make sense in the context of the rise of the hip-hop entrepreneurs,” Charnas added, referring to the long years hip-hop has spent knocking on the doors of US capitalism.
A deal reached nearly 30 years ago between the now legendary record label Def Jam and music giant Columbia paved the way.
However, it did not immediately erase the wariness of the establishment toward this African-American urban culture.
It took until the mid 2000s to see the kings of hip-hop sign lucrative deals turning their personal brands into very big money.
“Why would the mainstream understand rock’n’roll so easily, but then hip hop has to wait to have billion dollar deals” asked Steve Stoute, a former record label executive who founded the marketing company “Translation.”
In a sign of the changing times the magazine Forbes now publishes a wealth ranking specifically for the fortunes of hip-hop artists, which do not stem only from music.
The richest of all of them is P. Diddy, who founded his own record label, Bad Boy Records, but also established a line of clothing (Sean John), signed a partnership with the vodka brand Ciroc and launched a music channel, Revolt TV.
Following the success of his album Get Rich or Die Tryin’ rapper 50 Cent made a bundle by investing in Vitaminwater, which was bought out by Coca-Cola in 2007 for US$4.1 billion.
The seasoned businessman Jay-Z has also built an empire, including a clothing line and a stake in an NBA basketball team.
However, he says having an entrepreneurial spirit was more a necessity than a choice for hip-hop performers.
“We went to every single label and every label shut their door on us. The genius thing that we did was that we didn’t give up,” he said at an event with investment guru Warren Buffett in March last year.
Faced with plummeting revenues, the recording industry was no longer in a position to snub a commercial tidal wave.
“I think that the best thing that happened to hip-hop was teenagers having posters of these artists on their wall. They wanted to dress like these guys, singing the song in the house. It forced everybody to pay attention,” said Stoute, who produced an album for Eminem.
As a big money heavy weight, the business of hip-hop has set aside the angry social claims of pioneers like Public Enemy.
“Hip-hop long ago made peace with commercialism. In America, political hip-hop is nowhere,” Charnas said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in