Beyoncé and Jay-Z Are the Richest Celebrity Couple: He Once Said He Had ‘No Aspirations’
Even before news that Beyoncé had become a billionaire broke, she and Jay-Z were the wealthiest celebrity couple of the year. Outside of their successful music careers, both have various business ventures that have helped bring them to this point. Jay-Z was the first ever musician to become a billionaire. His level of wealth was unprecedented, and he once said that this would have shocked his younger self.
Beyoncé and Jay-Z are the wealthiest celebrity couple
In August, a study by ooShirts found that Jay-Z and Beyoncé were the wealthiest celebrity couple of the year. At the time, their reporting found that Beyoncé had a net worth of $700 million. Jay-Z was worth $2.5 billion. This meant their net worth was higher than that of couples like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, or Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco.
Stadium tours are extremely lucrative for artists. Beyoncé recently embarked on the highest-grossing tour of the year. She also has streams of revenue from businesses like Ivy Park, Cécred, Parkwood Entertainment, as well as brand deals.
While Beyoncé’s wealth largely comes from her music, Jay-Z’s business ventures brought him to billionaire status. He founded Roc-A-Fella Records, Roc Nation, and launched the TIDAL streaming service.
Jay-Z once said he had no aspirations for this kind of success
Long before Jay-Z became a billionaire, he said that he never could have anticipated his level of success. He grew up in Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects and sold drugs as a teenager. While he began writing music at a young age, he didn’t expect it to transform his life so dramatically.
When asked in a 2002 60 Minutes interview how he would have responded 15 years earlier if someone told him he’d be rich and famous, Jay-Z said his first question would be, “How?”
“I had no aspirations, no plans, no goals, no backup goals,” he said. “How is that going to happen? Doing what?”
Despite this, he said he spent hours each day working on his writing. It became an obsession for him.
“Yeah, what happened was I wrote so much in this book, I would sit at my table for hours and hours until my mother made me go to bed. And it was like this — this obsession with words and with writing,” he told NPR. “And as I got further away from that notebook — now as I was on the street, and these ideas would come, I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and grab, like, a paper bag or just buy a juice, anything just to get a paper bag.”
Eventually, he stopped needing the notebook. He worked on songs in his head, then tried to memorize them.
Beyoncé is now a billionaire like Jay-Z
Like her husband, Beyoncé is now a billionaire. Her record-breaking Cowboy Carter tour, which grossed $400 million, helped her reach this point.
Beyoncé is the fifth-ever musician to become a billionaire. Besides herself and Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, and Rihanna have all also achieved this milestone.
