Dr Dre Become the First Hip Hop Billionaire

Dr Dre  on  stage  performing which  has  made  him  fortune

Dr  Dre has   become  the  first  Billionaire in  the  world  of  Hip pop  music  according  to  an  information   that  was released by  forbes.com

That's the boast made by singer-songwriter Tyrese Gibson in a video posted on Facebook (and later removed), before he is pushed aside by Dr Dre, the co-founder of the Beats Electronics firm.
The list of the richest people on the planet, says the 49-year-old hip-hop star and entrepreneur, has changed "in a big way".
"The first billionaire in hip hop right here from the... West Coast believe me," says Dr Dre, before the video abruptly ends.

By most accounts, Apple's $3bn (£1.8bn) acquisition of the Beats headphone and music streaming service will increase Dr Dre's net worth from an estimated $550m to almost $800m - making him, if not hip-hop's first billionaire, certainly hip-hop's wealthiest man.

So how did Dr Dre, born Andre Romelle Young in inner-city Los Angeles, build his fortune?

 Dr Dre was certainly part of that early, scrappy hip-hop milieu.
Although he first found success as a musician with the World Class Wreckin' Cru and then with the seminal group N.W.A. - pioneers of gangsta rap - he was also a keen collaborator and producer, thus ensuring he had two revenue streams: one from performing, and another from producing.

Just a year after he released his debut album, The Chronic, in 1992 - which sold three million copies and won a Grammy award - Dr Dre also helped produce Snoop Dogg's first album, Doggystyle - which sold an astonishing five million copies.

He also, like many hip-hop stars of the era, made sure that he earned a cut of his own sales as a producer - eventually becoming, according to Rolling Stone magazine, "the single most influential producer in hip-hop history".
After a falling out with his first label, Death Row Records, due to a contract dispute (amongst other concerns), Dr Dre negotiated a deal with Interscope to start his own label, Aftermath Entertainment, in 1996.
He then signed and helped produce albums by young hip-hop artists, most notably Eminem, before selling his share of the label back to Interscope in 2001 for a reported $35m (£21m).

Source: BBC