Cheryl James is an American songwriter and rapper who is best known for being a member of the rap trio Salt-H-Pepa which also includes Sandra Denton and Spinderella. Cole is one of the highest-paid rappers in the world. Lindsey Buckingham. Jadakiss signature laugh and ah-hasqueal have signaled for decades that a lyrical masterclass was on the way. Chuck held everyones feet to the fire: crack dealers in the Black community (Night of the Living Baseheads); purveyors of systemic racism (Fight the Power); a ravenous press (Welcome to the Terror) and greedy corporations (Shut Em Down). Shes also the No. They also moved more than 2.6 million digital downloads. Lyrics Quiz. Rozays Hustlin dreams turned to gold when he rattled the cages of raps mainstream with his 2006 summer anthem and pledged his allegiance to Def Jam and its ex-president Jay-Z. As of March 2023, J. Cole's net worth is estimated to be $60 Million. Some McDonalds locations refuse to promote the celebrity meal. By genre, rock artists landed the most spots, 13, down one from last year; pop acts accounted for nine entries, down from 14; country, three spots, down from eight; and Latin, two berths, up one from 2019. The late rapper continues to be an inspiration to waves of rappers, particularly Bronx-bred MCs like Fat Joe, Remy Ma and Cardi B. Lil Waynes cultural, sonic and lyrical influence will forever be embedded into the fabric of hip-hop, by way of his talent as both an artist and as an A&R. But few rappers, if any, have repped the Bay longer or stronger than E-40. , as there seem to be some shenanigans involved with their accounting. Despite the lack of new music, Ye still generated 2.6 billion in combined streams, which yielded a $3.9 million payday. Publishing: $2.4K Coles story is well-known: Hov signed him to Roc Nation as its first artist in 2009 after he garnered attention with Lights Please and dropped some blistering guest verses (Wales Beautiful Bliss, Kanye Wests Looking for Trouble). The Coming, Rhymes 1996 major label debut album, couldnt have sported a better title to describe his explosive entrance. Fans couldnt get enough of the weed-smoking, carefree duos debauchery, which culminated in the 2001 cult classic feature film, How High, starring the pair and named after one of their enduring 90s hits. No matter the moniker, theres no denying Calvin Broadus Jr.s estimable impact as one of the founding fathers of West Coast and gangsta rap. 38 Streaming royalties consist of on-demand audio and video streams plus estimated royalties from programmed satellite, cable and webcasting services like SiriusXM and Music Choice. Eagles $16.3 million5. He also squeezed in seven live shows in early 2020, which amounted to a $91,500 paycheck for those performances. He earned $10 million in combined streaming royalties including over 1.4 billion in video streams, 6.2 billion in audio streams, and almost 7 billion in overall combined streams. San Franciscos Bay Area has always been a key birthplace for unique hip-hop talent, from MC Hammer and Tupac Shakur to Too $hort. Publishing: $1.8M The other two were Las Que No Iban a Salir and his first Billboard 200 No. And though he generated almost 3 billion more streams than Taylor Swift, he takes second place in streaming royalties because Swift owns her masters and is paid more per stream. It would be the first of twelve chart-topping albums for Wayne, including his iconic Tha Carter series, boasting a plethora of platinum plaques in the process. We're always a bit suspicious of Forbes highest-paid musician lists, as there seem to be some shenanigans involved with their accounting. Lonnie Rashid Lynn was seemingly carrying the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the entire Chicago rhyme community on his back with 1992sCan I Borrow a Dollar? The group also shot videos for each of the 10 tracks on the addiction-themed album, which contributed to total streaming revenue of $1.3 million. Strait was one of the few artists who made significant touring income before the pandemic. Known for his versatility, Ed Sheeren's cross-genre success has brought him to the top. Their lyrical skirmish ended in tragedy when Pac was shot and killed in a Las Vegas shooting in 96, rocking the entire music world. 3 in track downloads with over 1 million. Rod Wave is among the many hip-hop artists who dominated last year and earned a spot on Billboard'sranking of the highest-paid musicians of 2020, including Travis Scott, DaBaby, Kanye West, Roddy Ricch, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, and Lil Uzi Vert. Em also certifiably spits a mile a minute, breaking Guinness World Records like fastest rap in a hit single with Godzilla, where he rapped 225 words in a 30-second segment. This was nothing new for New Jerseys own Dana Owens: With her essential 1989 debut album All Hail the Queen, she not only delivered the classic Monie Love-featured Black feminist anthem Ladies First, she also got the party started (Come Into My House) and took out wack MCs (Wrath of My Madness). Prior to that in 2016, Mane scored his first Hot 100 No. All revenue figures cited are Billboard estimates and, due to rounding, an artists total may not equal the sum of the subcategories. The LOX frontman fostered his hip-hop breakout with a co-sign from The Notorious B.I.G., then stomped his way to prominence with his Timberlands and hard-nosed raps. Run the Jewels, "Walking in the Snow". In addition, that mix also encompasses 50 years of cultural milestones for a genre initially dismissed as a passing fad and now recognized as the industrys market-share leader. Sales: $1.3M 4 in physical album sales after moving 517,000 copies of their recordings. In addition, deceased artists are excluded from the rankings. 1. (Whats My Name? Now a rap elder statesman, Bun keeps a keen eye on next-gen talent, offering key co-signs to such contemporary stars as Drake and Kodak Black. Last years rank: Last years rank: Further showcasing his versatility, the rapper detoured into reggae as Snoop Lion on 2013s Reincarnated, before reclaiming his Snoop Dogg persona for 2018s Bible of Love, which debuted at No. Meanwhile, his enduring combination of lyrical prowess, classic albums and envelope-pushing evolution continue to support the widely held consensus that hes the best rapper of his generation. 2 Touring: $253K. Last years rank: In 2020, however, they played 20 shows to 215,000 fans behind their 2019 No. 26 Despite the COVID-19 pandemic curtailing chances for any artists to tour in 2020, several big-name rappers still made money through streaming and other means last year.. A subscription per-stream rate of $0.0021 blended to reflect the different statutory rates for ad-supported and subscription streams was applied to programmed streams; per-play estimated rates of 74 cents and $46 were applied to Music Choice and SiriusXM plays, respectively. Starting with 1993s riotous Party and Bullshit, the Brooklyn, New York kingpin later signed with Diddys Bad Boy Records. He showcased his genuine connection to fans by rapping over a YouTube producers J. Bolstered by two mammoth deals with luxury giant LVMH and Jack Dorsey's Square, Jay-Z has lapped the competition to become the highest-paid rapper of 2021; and as per Rolling Stone, the 2nd highest-paid musician behind Bruce Springsteen and his US$590 million / AU$811.9 million music catalogue sale.. Hip-hop's first billionaire managed to rake in a grand total of US$470 million / AU$646.75 . 7 in both overall streams (4.8 billion) and streaming royalties ($7.3 million). Published by on 30 junio, 2022 Like other hip-hop artists, he lags in sales royalties, taking home $161,000. Streaming: $3.7M According to Billboard's report, published on Monday (July 19), rappers Post Malone, Drake, YoungBoy Never Broke AgainandLil Baby are among the publication'sTop Paid Musicians of 2020. In the late 2010s, West (legally known as Ye) became one of the most divisive artists in the world due to his political views and goading (occasionally outright antagonistic) social comments. Sales: $564K The Dominican American bachata group, fronted by Romeo Santos, played 15 pre-pandemic U.S. shows in 2020 its first tour since breaking up in 2011. Thanks to his penchant for making gripping music videos such as the one for Darkness, which dealt with the mass shooting at the 2017 Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas he racked up 887.3 million on-demand video streams, good enough for a fourth-place finish in that category and No. Touring: $2.7M. Top earning rappers. World Tour (only two of which were reported to Boxscore), she still made a bundle in streaming and publishing income. Touring: $0. Rap Quiz. and Snoop Dogg to Eminem, Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar. More than any rock bands fan base, the KISS Army is very late to the streaming party: Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and company generated just 217 million combined streams. Luke Combs $9.2 million17. He also remains a streaming giant with $8.1 million in overall royalties, plus an additional $2 million from publishing. Sales: $485K Then came The Message (1982), hip-hops seismic GOAT recording, elevated by the rapper born Melvin Glover and his vivid ghetto portrait. Beyonce Knowles-Carters husband has succeeded in every era, spitting regal-scented rhymes that speak to the struggle, and to the opulence that follows an intensely self-made greatness. Who you calling a bch? That gave the band a $2.7 million touring payday. He earned an additional $2.2 million from publishing and $253,000 from two concerts. Jay Z the best rapper . Touring: $0. Last years rank: Publishing: $986K Touring: $12.4M. The band ranked third in physical sales selling 671,000 copies of its albums, 78% of which were vinyl reissues that are priced higher than CDs and thus pay higher royalties. Streaming: $6.8M Last years rank: 26. The classic psych-rockers ranked even higher in the sales royalties category No. 1 on Billboards 2020 Money Makers list is one of the few unsurprising results of a ranking that holds many surprises. Hip-hop artists remain music's top money makers. The genre with the biggest gains is R&B/hip-hop, which is represented by 12 artists this year, up from three in 2019. Post Malone is one of the handful of artists on this list who was touring prior to the pandemic shutdown. Last years rank: 1 overall streaming artist (as he was in 2019) with almost 8 billion streams when the on-demand video and web radio streams he amassed last year are included. Sales: $4.3M And he did all of it as one of the Souths first real rap stars, showcasing lyrical complexity and emotional depth in a region that was once wholly dismissed while also making classic cuts with legends from both coasts, like Jay-Z, Nas and 2Pac. The $5.7 million that she and her brother, FINNEAS, took home from their publishing royalties was tops in the category. Sheeran landed on the Hot 100 twice in February 2020. Billboard and Vibe are counting down the best MCs ever in honor of hip-hop's 50th anniversary. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google, Visit Billboard Pro for music business news, Phil Collins, Genesis Catalogs Sell to Concord, Dick Odette, Former Musicland Music Purchasing Head, Dies at 77. All the above sales and streaming royalty rates then had a 4% producers fee deducted. the year's most popular r&b/hip-hop songs, ranked by streaming activity from digital music sources tracked by luminate, radio airplay audience impressions as provided by luminate and sales data as . When touring is in full bloom, heritage rockers, country artists and jam bands dominate Money Makers because of their concert grosses. The Staten Island lyricist draws from a Technicolor palette of inimitable slang, colorful character profiles, luxurious wares and slippery flows to craft vibrant, imaginative stories. 1 Hot 100 hit, Rockstar, made him a streaming star, with combined streams of almost 3.9 billion over 710 million of them video streams which put him at No. Recorded-music totals are the sum of an artists sales, streaming and publishing earnings for 2020. On-demand streaming royalties were calculated using blended audio and video rates of $0.0053 and $0.0038 per stream, respectively. Like Roddy Ricchs, Waves video streams were particularly robust 793.5 million, the fifth-highest in the category. Despite laying low (for Ed Sheeran), he remained a staple of web radio, ranking at No. The songs helped give her a nice mix of sales, streaming and publishing revenue. He ranked at No. Building a reputation for delivering gritty tales in a laid-back style, accented by deep-toned, rumbling vocals and a signature dark sense of humor, Biggie went on to score 16 Hot 100 hits including two No. Following Taylor Swift, who ranks No. Sales revenue was calculated based on physical/digital albums and track sales. Between his Geto Boys tenure in the late 80s and his illustrious solo career stretching through the 2010s, Scarface laid bare the pitfalls of street life by presenting a stoic, pragmatic approach to hustling that differed from the flashy images glamorized by other artists. Taylor Swift. YoungBoy Never Broke Again breaks into Money Makers for the first time, due almost entirely to the prodigious number of streams his music generated. He co-founded Roc-A-Fella Records, collected 24 Grammys, ran hip-hops legendary Def Jam Records as president, guided Rihanna and Ye to billionaire status, founded a behemoth entertainment/sports agency in Roc Nation and best-selling spirits brands Dusse and Armand de Brignac and even today, still makes time to drop four-minute long rap verses that break the internet (as he did on DJ Khaleds God Did in 2022). countdown to spring training 2022; Hola mundo! what challenges do advertisers face with product placement? Drizzy Drake Rogers forecasted his superstar climb when he was Wheelchair Jimmy on the popular 00s teenage show Degrassi: The Next Generation. Guwop initially emerged alongside one-time adversary Jeezy with their 2005 collaboration So Icy, before things went south between them. As a wellspring of talent, Virginia has had an outsized influence on popular music. Billboard estimated each artists songwriters share of the recorded music included in these calculations, and publishing royalties were calculated as co-publishing deals, giving the writer 75% of those royalties. Sales: $635K Touring: $0. Despite breaking several Billboard records in 2019, when the group also made its albums available to digital platforms, fans seem to be adapting slowly to streaming: Tool logged just 604 million combined streams for the year. Publishing: $1.9M Blow may not possess his descendants complex rhyme skills, but he was a star in his own right thanks to a magnetic voice and charismatic stage presence. After Bun proved his chops as a solo artist with Pimp C behind bars, UGK reunited to craft its magnum opus with 2007s Billboard 200-topping Underground Kingz, released just months before Pimp Cs death at 33 in 2007. Tariq Trotter, co-founder of the legendary Roots crew and the long-running Phillybands lead MC, still amazes rap fans with electrifying stream-of-consciousness radio freestyles and brilliant live performances. Last years rank: No. Kid Rock, Detroit rapper Esham and Record Time's Mike Himes at the fighting for a name on the scrappy Detroit hip-hop scene of the '90s, . But with his peerless technical skills, larger-than-life personality and turn-of-the-century run of classic albums, Slim Shady has rightfully earned his spot in the upper echelon of GOAT rappers lists. On this years list, six hip-hop artists who didnt make the cut for the 2019 list ranked in the top 20. Streaming: $2.1M #nelly #stlunatics #ynwmelly #liltecca #juicewrld #playboicarti #dancingrappers #nbayoungboy #2000 #soreuzi #ride #wit #met #comes #radio. Revenue from merchandising, synchronization and sponsorship and livestream concerts is not included. 1 on the Billboard 200, and its title track did the same on both the Hot 100 and Top Streaming Songs charts, contributing to more than 4 billion combined streams and generating $6 million in streaming royalties. Now the 17-time Grammy winner (Mr. Morale was just newly crowned as best rap album) and Emmy winner for last years Super Bowl halftime show is focusing his entrepreneurial sights on pgLang, his film, TV and music collective that has already scored success with next-gen rapper Baby Keem. Despite these monster numbers, the band finished fifth in the sales royalties category with $4.3 million because the members do not own their masters. 3 on the Billboard 200. The top ten earners of 2021 banked more than $1 billion, nearly double their pre-pandemic 2019 haul. The Compton native has become one of musics most influential artists thanks to his vivid, thought-provoking and sometimes controversial lyrics, fearless genre experimentation, and agile-yet-masterful flow. Im drivin Caddy, you fixin a Ford, Joseph Simmons boasted on Run-DMCs 1984 breakthrough Rock Box. While DMC was the majestic voice and the late DJ Jam Master Jay the heartbeat of the epochal 80s rap trio, Run was the undisputed star. A defining byproduct of raps blog era, J. Cole made a name for himself with celebrated mixtapes like 2007s The Come Up, 2009s The Warm Up and 2010s Friday Night Lights. And that was only the tip of the iceberg: After releasing 2022s I Never Liked You, featuring current Grammy nominee and No. Touring: $0. A year later, the first universally hailed God MC demystified the allure of the Big Apple (New York, New York) and distilled the crisis of the cocaine epidemic (White Lines [Dont Dont Do It]) before crashing pop radio with his 1984 appearance on Chaka Khans Grammy-winning, No. Billboard has officially released its list of the highest-paid music artists in 2020, which shows how hip-hop has dominated as a genre in the last year. After serving a two-year prison sentence in 2016 for firearm possession by a convicted felon, a rejuvenated Guwopsubsequently went on a mainstream run like he was a new artist. 1, and the second reached No. In a typical touring year, The Lumineers would probably not have made the Money Makers top 40. Jay-Z came in second with 81 million, Drake came in third with 75 million, and Diddy came in third with 70 million. To describe Chuck D as arapperwould be as brazen an understatement as labeling Jimi Hendrix aguitarist. His $66,400 in sales royalties came entirely from digital downloads. Sales: $1.1M and 2Pac, show his romantic side on the smash Mary J. Blige collab All I Need and just have fun with Redman on the duos How High films and Blackout! The timeless Ms. Lauryn Hill straddles the line between Motown soul, boom bap, R&B, jazz and rap defying convention and introducing a new standard for genre-bending rappers. These days Kendrick's name is on every hip hop lover's lips. Cole Type Beat on procrastination (broke). He also went platinum with all five of his 2010s albums the last three (2014 Forest Hills Drive, 4 Your Eyez Only and KOD) with no features, of course. Last years rank: No. Over a decade into his prolific career, Future Hendrix is more commercially relevant than ever: the ATL trap legend became the only artist to appear on the Hot 100 every week throughout 2022. A recent Billboard revealed that such big-name rappers who saw the most cash in 2021 are Post Malone, Drake, YoungBoy Never Broke Again & Lil Baby.They're at the top in the least of the top paid musicians of 2020. ), among the catchiest singles in hip-hop history. 31, and then charted with his own single, South of the Border, featuring Camila Cabello and Cardi B, which hit No. However, Andre Youngslegacy as a lead rapper on three separate era-defining albums 1988s Straight Outta Compton with N.W.A. The world of hip hop still found a way to get to the bag in a pandemic-plagued 2020.. Last years rank: No. Publishing: $1.7M (1989) were eloquent hood testimonies. 1 at the end of that year and kept on selling and streaming through 2020, as well as delivering two 2020 Hot 100 hits, Watermelon Sugar, which topped the chart in August, and Adore You, which hit No. Last years rank: KRS-One evolved from being The Blastmaster to The Teacha a testament to his own lyrical and personal development. curtailing chances for any artists to tour in 2020. Dre e ha ottenuto il primo successo due anni pi tardi con il singolo My Name Is. Touring: $0. Under the tutelage of the late Notorious B.I.G., Queen Bee debuted as a member of Junior M.A.F.I.A., becoming an icon following her titillating 1996 solo debut album Hard Core. Listening to Black Thought is like enrolling in a masterclass on lyricism. Streaming: $823.4K Touring: $5M. After an attempt on his life left him riddled with nine bullets, Curtis Jackson III revved up a meteoric resurrection. But through only two studio albums that still resonate nearly 30 years later, Wallace proved that a charismatic big man could mix lyrical street rhymes with heart and humor and permeate the mainstream with style.