Dr. Dre Is Finally A Billionaire—For Real This Time

For years, Dr. Dre has always been regarded as “hip-hop’s first billionaire,” and no one actually combed through his finances to see if it was true. 

It also helped speculation when Dre noted in May of 2014, “They need to update the Forbes list, sh-t just changed,” after he and Jimmy Iovine sold their wildly popular Beats by Dre business to Apple for $3 billion. 

But sales, taxes, and actual profit can all be deceiving, but nearly a dozen years after Dre claimed that Forbes needed to update their list, they actually have updated it as the famed producer/rapper is officially on the Forbes 2026 Billionaires list.

“However, it’s a very long list — and a vivid demonstration of the vast earnings gap between the 1% and the rest of the world — and Dre is tied for 3332nd on the world’s richest list, with Jared Kushner, Rihanna, steel magnate Richard Teets Jr. and lots of others,” Variety notes. 

Variety notes that Dre didn’t make the Forbes painting of some of the world’s richest people partying on a super yacht that included “President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg and others, with two of the three pictured Black people (Jay-Z and Beyoncé) off in the left corner, with Oprah relegated to the balcony. Beyoncé is also new to the list, although her billionaire status was announced several months ago.”

But Dre does join an elite group of celebs that also crossed over to the billion dollar club, 22 of which are entertainers, and is the sixth musician, most of which were added in the last three years, joining Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, and Rihanna. 

Elon Musk continues to be the top billionaire, for a second year in a row, and is the richest person in the world, reportedly worth an estimated $839 billion.

“His net worth skyrocketed by half of a trillion dollars from last year, thanks to a rise in the value of Tesla, and SpaceX which is aiming to go public in 2026. Musk is the first person ever recorded to reach the $800 billion mark, as he moves toward becoming the world’s first trillionaire,” Variety reports. 

To put Musk’s net worth in context, the second richest person on the list was Larry Page, cofounder of Google, with an estimated net worth of $257 billion, followed by his cofounder Sergey Brin at No. 3 ($237 billion). Amazon’s Jeff Bezos holds the No. 4 spot ($224 billion) and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ($222 billion) rounds out the top 5.

See social media’s reaction to Hip-Hop making it this far below.