Hip-hop’s pretty-much-official Royal Family and pretty-much-everyone-else’s-unofficial royal family are now worth over a billion dollars – a billion!
Forbes Magazine (which seems to really love publishing stuff about how rich people are) listed Queen Bey as one of America’s richest self-made women. She now has a personal fortune of 350 million bucks. Add that to her husband’s $810 million (last week Forbes listed the world’s richest hip-hop acts) and their ‘household’ wealth is $1.16 billion dollars.
They do more than just sell albums...
Kinda unsurprisingly, Mr & Mrs Beyonce don’t just make their money from music – like most artists touring and ticket sales are a pretty big part of their income (Jay Z signed a $200 million deal with Live Nation and has a whole load of festival dates coming up).
Clothing, bars, sports – you name it, Jay Z’s got a stake in it. He’s like a really really successful Del Boy, or the poster boy for the ‘gig’ economy. The couple have a pretty big stake in Tidal – a 600 million dollar company Jay Z just so happens to own.
...and getting political has paid off
Lemonade was definitely Beyonce’s most opinionated album yet. If you haven’t heard it, the 2016 record was sweary (F-bombs everywhere), angry and pretty empowering. It set out Beyonce’s intention to take absolutely zero shit from anyone (including Jay Z) and aligned her more strongly than ever to the Black Lives Matter movement.
The whole thing was pretty damn successful. The album was number one (that’s her sixth number one album in a row). Formation, which she performed at the Super Bowl was pretty controversial, which could have dented its success, but it seemed to have the opposite effect – the performance launched the ticket sales for her Formation world tour, crashed the ticket sales website, and all tickets sold out in like 30 minutes, around the world. The tour sold millions of tickets, and reportedly earned $250 million.
Bey and J also publicly supported Hillary Clinton in the election campaign, performing at an event in Ohio.
She doesn't keep it all for herself
Beyonce was named the most charitable celebrity by dosomething.org. Along with her public support of Black Lives Matter, she raised money for the Flint Water Crisis (when over 100,000 people were exposed to dangerous levels of lead through drinking water in Flint, Colorado).
She also headlined a Tidal concert to raise money for education and for the Robin Hood Foundation which works to end poverty in New York.
She’s not the only celeb to do her part at saving the world – Leo, Kim K & Kanye, JK Rowling, they've all had a go – but it seems like the Queen does it best.
So what is the formula for a billion dollar marriage? Sure, having a hip-hop mogul for a husband and a whole load of power and influence probably helps, but Beyonce’s pretty certain her success comes from one thing only – hard work. She once told Forbes, "I haven't met anyone who works harder than me in my industry".
