Dr. Dre About To Become Rap's First Billionaire With Apple Beats Electronics $3.2B Deal

Dr. Dre is poised to become the rap world’s first bling-ionaire.

The music mogul all but confirmed Friday that Apple was buying Beats Electronics, the company he co-owns that makes the good doctor’s wildly popular Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, for $3.2 billion.

And he did it, Compton-style.

“First billionaire in hip-hop, right here on the motherf-----g west coast,” Dre is heard saying in a NSFW video that appeared on R&B singer Tyrese Gibson’s Facebook page.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the iPhone-maker was close to inking a deal with Dre that would make the 49-year-old former chief of Death Row records hip hop’s highest roller.

Forbes calculated that after capital gains taxes, the deal would actually leave Dre about $200 million shy of being a billionaire. And his new net worth of around $800 million would not be enough to land him a spot on the Forbes 400.

But it would make Dre hip hop’s highest roller, putting him ahead of Puff Daddy, who currently tops the magazine’s rap-to-riches list with a net worth of $700 million.

Dre, whose real name is Andre Romelle Young, is second at $550 million.

In the video, Gibson served notice that “the Forbes list just changed.”

Dre, who put the Los Angeles suburb of Compton on the musical map and helped guide the career of rappers like Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and The Game, got into the headphone game with business partner Jimmy Iovine, the legendary music producer.

Together they launched a trendy line to compete with outfits like Bose and Skullcandy.

The Apple deal — the biggest acquisition in the generally conservative company’s history — would also include their new Beats Music streaming service, which Dre and Iovine introduced in January to compete with Pandora and Spotify.

It would appear to signal an attempt by Apple, the world’s biggest seller of tunes, to revamp its music business more than a decade after it opened the iTunes download store.

“Beats has a unique brand—it speaks to a nice young demographic, which is really interesting to marketers,” said Peter Csathy, former president of Musicmatch, told Forbes.

The fledgling deal was first reported by The Financial Times.

Forbes magazine’s rap to riches list and the net worth of the top five:

— Puff Daddy $700 million

— Dr. Dre $550 million

— Jay Z $520 million

— Birdman $160 million

— 50 Cent $140 million

SOURCE