Jay-Z: A business, man

23:07and the thousands of children like him, lost in one of the most dangerous places on earth. From BBC Sounds and CBC Podcasts, Bloodlines. Listen on BBC Sounds. So how does Jay-Z go from a million to a billion? Well, first of all, he meets someone he really likes and then he puts a ring on it. He first met Beyonce Knowles around 2000. That was officially confirmed with a couple shoot for Vanity Fair in 2001. That's one way to announce a relationship. And, you know, he's largely been pretty private about this relationship beyond name-checking her in his songs and also going on tour together, which I saw, which was incredible for the record.

23:51But as you say, if you like it, you should have put a ring on it. He finally does in 2008 and the ring is expensive. It costs$5 million, can you imagine? She's not wearing that ring on the Renaissance tour. What if someone pulls that off? Yeah. And they have three children together and they become, I mean, it's hard to imagine a bigger power couple than that anywhere in music. Oh, no, I can't think of a bigger one. I mean, you know, this makes Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull look or Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kenseth look pretty lame, doesn't it? Yeah, pretty B-list. So, OK, he's had some success.

24:28He's been on tour. They are the incredible power couple. At this point, you'd think, I'm going to take a little bit of time off. But this is where the empire really begins to grow. Yeah. So in the early noughties, he's developing artists at Rockefeller Records, many of whom you have heard of. You know, Kanye West came up through Rockefeller. And to attract interest in these newbies, Jay-Z commits to appearing on at least one track on their albums, which is smart. It's like a cosign from Jay-Z. Seems to me that's when F-E-A-T dot came into all the track listings. It's like featuring whatever, featuring, featuring, featuring.

25:03That's really interesting. I wonder if Rockefeller pioneered that. Yeah, because it's ubiquitous now, right? It's everywhere. And they were expanding beyond music. And this is the other interesting thing, because lots of riches lie this direction, which is not just the music. 100%. And Damon Dash himself said, you know, we shouldn't let people make money off us and we shouldn't be giving them free advertising with our lifestyle. Meaning that if you're in a rap video and you're showing off all these designer labels, you know, jewellery, cars, booze, clothes, you should be making money off it. This is the early days of influencing, which is like, I'll wear this, but you have to pay me.

25:39Or failing that, I'll wear my own stuff. So in 1999, they launched this clothing brand, Rockerwear, which within 18 months starts making$18 million in revenue. Yeah. And there's a track you don't know, 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, 4 in 18 months, 80 million more. I wish more of our billionaires told us broke down their finances in rats. I think that would make it much easier for us. Yeah. So in 2007, a few years later, he sold Rockerwear to another brand group for$204 million. So we're getting into quite big leagues, big numbers here. But as is so often the case, as the money rolls in, personal relationships begin to fray.

26:19Yes. So Jay-Z and Damon Dash start falling out. And, you know, you could kind of foul this under, I guess, competing business philosophies. I mean, one journalist says that someone like Damon Dash is built for early stage companies. But like any company, the seed stage leaders might not be the best for the Series B or C stage. And that is code for basically some people are good at starting things up, creating a bit of momentum. But as they scale up and become bigger companies, you need a different skill set to grow and then manage it as a different business. And that person to take things to the next level is Jay-Z.

26:58So he speaks to the CEO of Universal, which is the parent company of Def Jam. And he agrees to become president in 2005, where he is reportedly paid$10 million a year. That's quite something. He's become president of the label, which is not a normal thing. You know, you don't see Michael Stite from R.E.M. becoming the president of EMI. It's kind of a weird, in a way, it's quite an unusual setup. No, and you have to wonder, you know, his early business, if you can put it that way, dealings, kind of set him up to know how to manage a company. Because most musicians are just quite artistic, creative people.

27:35They aren't really money guys, but Jay-Z clearly was. And one of the other incentives for him taking this job at Def Jam is that Def Jam had the rights to Jay-Z's master recordings and he made this deal where the masters would revert to him in 10 years. And interestingly, he turned down an offer from Warner Records, which is home to, you know, people like Common and Queen Latifah and Ice-T. They actually offered him a higher salary to become an executive, but he turned it down for that reason. He said, it's an offer you can't refuse. I could say to my son or my daughter, here's my whole collection of recordings.

28:07I own those, they're yours. So interesting how the rights or owning the master copies, it becomes such an issue for so many recording artists. It's really at the heart of the relationship. Yeah. As Def Jam's president, he's now kind of the boss of Rockefeller Partners. So he's now in charge of Damon, who once upon a time was the person who hired him. This is the succession bit, right? This is the bit where people start falling out and starting fights. This reminds me of the Bernard Arnault story, where he basically starts as the junior partner, and then ends up as the boss and then boots out the people below him.

28:39And so, well, in this case, Damon Dash decides, I'm not going to report to the person I actually consider I actually created. Yeah, so Damon leaves Rockefeller to start his own business. New York Magazine actually describes this as Damon getting the intellectual property equivalent of a lump of coal because the bulk of Rockefeller's artists just end up following Jay-Z to remain on the label. Yeah, and in fact, Kanye West, despite being discovered by Damon Dash, sticks with Jay-Z when he could have gone off with them and he sticks with Jay-Z. It's interesting what Kanye says about Jay-Z because he says, Jay-Z was a nice guy.

29:13I wanted to learn this technique that Jay got of actually being likeable. Jay-Z knows how to move in a room full of vultures. If Kanye West was trying to learn from Jay-Z how to be likeable, I would say that is a work very much in progress. I'm not sure how much Jay-Z wants to mentor Kanye right now at the minute. So Zach O'Malley Greenberg, who wrote the biography of Jay-Z, said that what he does is he absorbs the best qualities of the mentor, he applies his own talents, surpasses the mentor and moves on. It's a bit like sort of young Skywalker becoming the master or something. So he becomes the de facto boss then.

29:49And he was described at Def Jam as being humble and thoughtful and really injecting life back into the label, including signing one of our other billionaires, a certain 17-year-old girl from Barbados who becomes known as Rihanna. In fact, when we did the Rihanna story, the Jay-Z arrival in her life is transformational. So here we go. Now we're seeing it from the other side. So Jay-Z is successful, right? But he wants to create and support the creation of music that Larson isn't just beholden to current trends. So in 2007, he walks away from that multi-million dollar paycheck and says he's not going to renew his contract as Def Jam president.

30:27But Def Jam still owned the master recordings, the masters, and they weren't due to revert to him under the deal until 2014 because he signed a 10 year deal. But he manages to negotiate getting them back. So the chairman of Def Jam, this guy called L.A. Reid, allowed Jay-Z to walk in and have a conversation with the chairman of Universal Music Group, which was the parent company of Def Jam. He ended up buying his last album back. I mean, the way Jay-Z talks about a negotiation like this makes it sound like they're just chilling by the swimming pool. I'm sure it was much more difficult. I would love, there's some meetings within this story, which I, again, would love to have been a fly on the wall.

31:07The idea just waltz in to the chairman of a massive record label and say, oh, by the way, can I have my original rights back? Yeah, sure. It doesn't happen like that. I wonder if you grow up dealing drugs and, you know, slinging crack on the street and your idea of a business negotiation is sitting opposite someone who you know has probably got a gun on him and that there's like kilos of coke at stake. I wonder if just walking in to meet the chairman of Universal is no big deal. So in 2008, having left Def Jam, he signs a new partnership with a huge concert promoter called Live Nation. And this is a big money signing.

31:43This is a 10-year,$150 million deal. And it also includes$50 million to cover the costs of starting a new record label and talent agency called Rock Nation. And the deal also includes a touring advance of$25 million, which allows him to create an even better stadium show and price his own tickets higher, which is an upgrade. And crucially, he also plays Glastonbury that year. And it was epic. I think it probably brought Jay-Z to the attention of, you know, a lot of people, you know, he was a big, big artist at the time. You don't get to be a headliner without doing that. But anyone who was sceptical about his ability to headline a concert like that would have been blown away by that performance.

32:25Oh, yeah. And I think definitely in the UK, there was a perception in those days, which were kind of ruled by indie music and boys and bands and things like that, that hip hop and rap was not a genre that had much like intellectual thought behind it. You know, it was like all about playing about girls, about big cars, guns, drugs, etc. And Jay-Z coming on stage and showing what he could do. I think that was a real turning point in how society revealed rap in the UK, at least. so rock nation is a stable with huge names in it rihanna asap rocky alicia keys etc but the music industry alone won't make you a billionaire just like how rihanna had to diversify her portfolio into beauty and clothing he has to expand out of his niche and he's already started doing that to be fair because back in 2004 he bought a slice of the nets basketball team the New Jersey Nets, putting in a pretty modest$1 million at that point.

33:24And Jay-Z also played a crucial role in moving the Nets from their original home of New Jersey to Brooklyn, which is, of course, where Jay-Z was born. But surprisingly, he sells his Nets stake in 2013 so he can start his own sports agency because apparently there's a rule, can't own the team as well as owning the agency. So his description of, you know, Roc Nation sports is they want to build the brands of professional athletes like they've done for top music artists like Rihanna. So they represent top stars like Kevin Durant and Todd Gurley. And it's interesting, I think, because it's almost like he bought a stake in the basketball team to kind of figure out the ropes.

34:02And then he's building on that knowledge now to launch something much more in line with being in music. Yeah. So he's diversifying into sports. He's becoming an agent, a super agent as well. And this is where the booze comes back in. We know he likes to rack up a bar bill, but he also makes booze pay for him. Yeah, so he was one of the rappers who helped popularise this French champagne called Cristal in the 90s and the 2000s. You know, in hard knock life, he says, let's sip the Chris and get pissy pissy. But when the managing director of the Champagne House at Mixed Cristal is asked by The Economist if this association with a, you know, quote unquote, bling lifestyle could hurt the brand, he goes on to put his foot in it massively.

34:45Yeah, he says it's a good question, but what can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it. I'm sure Dom Perignon or Krug, other brands of champagne, would be delighted to have their business. And suffice to say, this did not please Jay-Z. He was very angry and understandably so. Yeah, and he said the comments were racist. He withdrew the sale of Cristal from all his bars. And he said when Cristal became a household name among young consumers, it wasn't because of anything they'd done. It's because of what we'd done. If Cristal had understood this dynamic, they would have been so dismissive.

35:20In fact, we didn't need them at all. And he actually stops mentioning Cristal completely in favour of another champagne brand. Armand de Brignac. and there's actually a music video that shows him refusing a bottle of Cristal and accepting the other brand instead in the music video for show me what you've got and it's around this time it's believed that he actually buys shares in the company which is one way of punishing Cristal yeah and sure enough it works and he sort of talks about his relationship with brands because this is quite a central part of a new economy he says my brands are an extension of me all my businesses are part of the culture so I have to stay true to whatever I'm feeling at the time, whatever direction I'm heading and hopefully everyone follows.

36:03And largely they do. And so in 2014, he officially announces he buys an interest in Armand, although it's believed to be an extension of the undisclosed amount he already owned. And by 2019, he would own 100 % of the brand. Yeah, and then he also follows the same kind of pattern with a growing cognac brand in a joint venture with Bacardi. And in 2019, he launches his own luxury cannabis brand with Rihanna and DJ Khaled as investors. And apparently, I'm told this, I have no real knowledge of this, you could get a$50 OG hand roll, which I'm told is a hefty joint with one and a half grams of top shelf cannabis.

36:44I'm looking at the producers now, what's top shelf cannabis when we're at home? I actually... I'm getting a thumbs up back from me. I actually went onto the website to check this out and they describe it as a sweet, spicy and meticulously crafted to hit just right. And then also, of course, he's in the music business and the music business has changed from when he was selling CDs back in the late 90s. It's all about streaming and he wants to get into that business. And this is where Tidal comes in. So Tidal was created by the Scandi tech company called Aspiro. And it launches in 2010. And it's focusing on providing higher quality audio than what you might get from other streamers like Spotify.

37:24But it was, you know, struggling. Yeah, popular with the kind of audio files, the hi-fi and speaker, the headphone nerds. Exactly. People don't spend anything, spend their entire year's salary on a pair of headphones. But it was struggling financially. And in 2015, JC bought the company for$56 million through one of his holding companies. So he's got big money right now. And he hosts a secret meeting of future investors, celebrities, managers, record labels in L.A., very glitzy. Everyone's in town for the Grammys. but it doesn't really go that well it sounds like Rihanna apparently arrived so late that the meeting was almost over.

38:01Kanye was apparently out of control I want to be at this meeting. Yeah it sounds like to be a fly on a wall of that meeting right before the Grammys. And I remember this moment because it was when the artists were going to kind of take back a bit of control they were saying we're not going to just see our income eroded by streaming services where we're not getting a fair crack of the whip and you had people like alicia keys madonna nikki minaj beyonce they were all there saying we're going to take this in a different direction but it was criticized because their business model was going to pay a bit more to the artists and people thought this was just a way of self-enrichment maybe yeah and actually i do remember this this point when rihanna's auntie came up life of pablo by kanye came up lemonade by Beyonce came out at first you could only access them through Tidal so you had to sign up they were kind of riding high on this hype of the initial subscribers but then people kind of started seeing this as hey why are we paying extra for these albums that we're going to listen to anyway on another streaming service that doesn't seem fair but Lily Allen at the time tweeted that this exclusivity would make the public swarm back to pirate sites and droves if you shut off and put behind some walled garden.

39:16Rather than people pay to climb over that wall, they'll actually go and find it somewhere else and it could be counterproductive. Yeah, up-and-coming artists, she said, we're going to suffer as a result. And was Lily Allen right? Tidal hasn't done that well. It's still there, but it's not a major player in the streaming wars. No, it's tiny. It's a minnow. Spotify's still number one, the likes of Apple. And Tidal, I think, has got less than 1 50th of the downloads. So it was a rare venture which didn't quite work out for Jay-Z. But still, Jay-Z goes from strength to strength in terms of monetary value.

39:50So in 2019, according to Forbes, he becomes hip-hop's first ever billionaire. Yeah, they add up all his stakes in different companies and income. They knock off the amount of money he spends on a superstar lifestyle. And actually, the highest proportion, and we've mentioned this a couple of times, the biggest proportion of wealth comes from those booze deals. Yeah, so$310 million from that champagne, $100 million from the Cognac, which has grown nearly 80 % annually. He's also got an investment portfolio. He's got stakes in Uber. Interestingly enough, he actually has a stake in Rihanna's Savage X Fenty line of lingerie, which we've covered already in this series.

40:29The music business accounts for a smaller proportion of his wealth. So Tido is worth about$100 million, Roc Nation$75 million. He's got a music catalogue, which is worth an estimated$75 million. And he also owns a$70 million art collection. Of course he does. Which includes Basquiat's and Warhol's. I like this. There's a line from one of his songs saying, Basquiat's Warhol's serving as my muses. My house like a museum, so I see him when I'm peeing. Rhyming of the highest calibre. He had a lot of fun on the day he came up with that line.

41:14So let's bring it up to date. So today, age 54, that makes me almost exactly the same age as me. Are you worth$2.5 billion? I am not. So that is what he's worth,$2.5 billion. And in fact, in the five years since first becoming a billionaire, he's more than doubled that wealth. He's had a few big deals. So in 2021, he sells a majority entitled to Jack Dorsey's mobile payment company Square for 297 million. So Forbes estimates that Jay-Z made 149 million in cash and stocks, plus he gets a seat on the board of Square. And the week before, he sold 50 % of his champagne brand, the Armand Brignac, to LVMH, a name that comes up in our billionaire series.

41:56And those two sales made his net worth jump by 40 % overnight. And in 2023, he sold a majority stake of that Cognac brand, do say to Bacardi, which is worth about$750 million. So he is very firmly a billionaire, although only number 1 ,246 in the world today, but one of the best known. So time to judge him. This is the bit where we go through a bunch of categories and we give our billionaire a mark out of 10. So let's start with wealth. Like you say, he's not in the top 10. He's not even in the top 100 or thousands, but he wears his wealth pretty well. I would say he knows how to live the good life.

42:37When we've done this category before, it's not just absolute numbers. It's how do they parade it? How do they show it? And they've never, both him and his lady wife. His lady wife? His lady wife, Beyonce. St. Nulls have never been afraid to big ostentatious displays of wealth. And in fact, it's part of the brand. It's part of the deal, right? I would give him probably a seven just for how he wears it. Yeah. He's not going to space. No. I actually cannot imagine Jay-Z in space. I think he's too sensible for that. I would give him a seven out of ten. Yeah, I'm going to agree with you. A seven out of ten seems about the right between, like, it's not massive, but it's flaunted.

43:20Rags to riches. How far has Jay-Z come? Ooh, a long way. Yeah. I think he scores very highly on this. I mean, he could be the only person to threaten Oprah Winfrey in this category. Yeah. How much did we give Oprah? Was that a 10? We gave her a 10, didn't we? I think we might have even given her 11. I mean, she literally was in rags and was worth$5 billion. So he wasn't in rags, but he was hustling on the street. He shot his own brother. He was shot at himself. He was shot at himself. He happened to be in London doing something when lots of his mates were locked up. So it was pretty precarious existence.

43:55So I'm going to give him a nine. Yeah, I think a nine out of ten is good for me. As he said, there are very few people from my neighbourhood that make it out. Forget about being successful. I mean making it out alive. So, yeah, a nine. Well deserved. What about our third category, philanthropy? So I have to admit, I didn't actually know that much about what Jay-Z does philanthropically. He doesn't tend to rap about it as much as he raps about other things. No, it's not quite got the same gist to it, has it? You know, I picked up my phone, I gave a bunch of months of charity. I'm just embarrassing myself here.

44:29It's one of those really awkward moments where everyone's cringing. I'm doing the broadcast equivalent of dad dancing. I enjoyed it. I think I just need maybe a half rhyme in that would make it work. OK. Anyway, he does, however, establish something called the Sean Carter Foundation, his real name, of course, with his mother, Gloria Carter. And it aims to bridge the opportunity gap that exists across the education system by providing college scholarships. Yeah, I wonder whether Stormzy was slightly inspired by that. Because, you know, Stormzy gave that endowment to kids could go to Cambridge. Yeah, yeah, actually, you know what, I think you're probably right.

45:02And he talks a little bit about his philanthropic endeavours and goes back to the sixth grade teacher that we all talked about. You know, a small thing changed my life. A sixth grade teacher said, you know what, you're kind of smart. And I believed her. And that was the beginning. And that gave him a different sense of himself and therefore opportunity. If you're that sixth grade teacher, you must be thinking to yourself, wow. Yeah, I wonder if that sixth grade teacher is still toiling away. Somewhere in Marcy Projects, Brooklyn. Or whether they've been made some sort of honorary trustee on a nice stipend.

45:33I hope the latter is true. Oh, 100%. And he also co-founded a campaign group called the Reform Alliance, which lobbies for reforming the probation, parole and sentencing systems. And you know what, I have to credit Jay-Z with this because he knows what he wants to support. Issues like reforming the prison system, the justice system, you know, something that especially affects young black men. You know, it's not exactly the headline grabbing stuff that most billionaires support. No, I mean, this is a different category than sort of the Smithsonian Institute or some massive library or whatever, but it's something that matters to him and his personal.

46:08So I think that that counts for a lot. So I'm going to give him a seven for philanthropy. I'd give him an eight, I think. It's interesting when you have someone who grew up in that kind of background, from that kind of poverty, and you see what he wants to do with his money. He's clearly still committed. It's targeted. It means something to him. It's not just showering money in order to get social approval. No. Okay, so villainy. This is an interesting category here. Well, I mean, he was a drug dealer. He shot his own brother. He also apparently was arrested in 1999 for stabbing a record executive in a club because he was rumoured to have been bootlegging Jay-Z's fourth album.

46:49I think some of these earlier experiences may have held the key to why he was so successful in some of his negotiations with record company bosses later in his career. I mean, sure enough, in 2023, the actual music executive who was stabbed cleared him and said Jay-Z was not actually the guy who stabbed me that night. Right. So that's that cleared up then. And, you know, we can't let this category pass without mentioning the famous Met Ball incident, which is where Jay-Z, Beyonce and her sister Solange got into a lift and Solange attacked him while Beyonce does nothing. And it was rumoured to have been because Jay-Z was cheating on Beyonce.

47:26Right. With a certain Becky with the good hair. He was kind of upfront about his infidelity a little bit later on, wasn't he? Yeah. he says in 444 I'll F up a good thing if you let me let me alone Becky a man that don't take care of his family can't be rich so he's drug dealing brother shooting cheating guy and yet I can't bring myself to say that this guy is a villain no and you know what even though he did cheat it did give us the album Lemonade which is an excellent album so maybe it all worked out for Beyonce and him in the end it's difficult when you come from a certain background, the same kind of social norms that we might consider clearly don't apply.

48:06I'm not trying to be patronising about this, but it's a different world, right? Yeah, I did a documentary once where I spoke to kids who'd done acid attacks. And one thing that someone told me has always stuck with me, which is that when you come from a background like that, the idea of someone just saying, oh, but could you just like not stop dealing drugs, you know, stop carrying a knife around, you know, stop getting involved with gangs. That's like the equivalent of someone coming to us and saying, why don't you just fly to the moon? You know, it's not in your world at all. So to be able to break out of that mold, to be able to leave that world and become enormously successful, that's like a huge thing.

48:40Yeah. And he said that at 14 or 15 years old, you're thinking about sneakers, thinking about some relief from the pain you're feeling. You're not thinking about the destruction you're doing to your own neighborhood through this business. So on villainy, I'm going to give him a four for villainy. Yeah, I'm going to give him a three for villainy. I was going to give him a five thinking that you were going to go. I was going to say, in which case, I'll give him, hang on, I'm going to give him five and you give him three. We can't always give the same numbers. I'm slightly biased because I do love Jay-Z's music.

49:11So take that with a pinch of salt. Okay. Power. This is always an interesting category, isn't it? He can't launch an army into a conflict. He can't pick up the phone to every head of state. But in the music business, enormously powerful, right? I mean, look at the stable of people he's got with him. Exactly. You know, if he can pick up the phone and get Rihanna and A$AP Rocky on the line, that kind of says it all. But, you know, that's purely in music. But there is a political dimension. And in fact, Obama sort of channeled a bit of Jay-Z in a primary debate. Hillary Clinton attacked him and he just does this little sort of...

49:49Gesture. Gesture of wiping lint off the shoulders of his suit, which is a reference to the Jay-Z song, Dirt Off Your Shoulder. And that kind of blew Jay-Z away. He said, what time are we living in where a presidential nominee is making reference to a rapper? Yeah, I mean, if a president knows who you are and is name-checking you, that's pretty big. And he's clearly got a direct channel of communication with Obama. He says, we've sat and had dinner, we've spoken on the phone. You know, he can pick up the phone to the President of the United States. I would say power. I'm going to give him a, and also within the music industry, I'm going to give him a seven.

50:23I would actually give him a six because right now I don't if Jay-Z called Joe Biden, would Joe Biden know who Jay-Z was? I think that Joe Biden would know who Jay-Z was. Just about. Just about. And in fact, I would say it is testimony to Jay-Z's influence and profile that an 80 year old white guy like Joe Biden would know who Jay-Z is. That is very true. I would say that's my evidence that he is actually a seven. Okay, so you're a seven, I'm a six. Let's go to Legacy. I'm going to score Jay-Z very highly on this, FYI. This is my Star Wars, this is my George Lucas episode. Okay, but legacy is like, did they change anything?

51:02What were they remembered for? He was president of Def Jam. But, you know, musically, is there a distinctive Jay-Z legacy? Because I would say people like Public Enemy and NWA were more culturally important rap-wise than Jay-Z. And before that, people like Curtis Mayfield. That's my take on it. But I think what Jay-Z did moving on from Public Enemy me was to show that rap could become this enormously successful globally important genre right so like if you go to Finland there's probably someone who knows who Jay-Z is who is you know in their 20s if you go to Indonesia they'll probably know who Jay-Z is I can't say the same thing for someone like Curtis Mayfield even though he did contribute something really important to the origins of this whole genre but Jay-Z I think built it into a business into like this empire and he showed younger rappers you know he showed people like asap rocky for instance you know that there's a way to get rich off your craft and it doesn't involve going back into you know drug dealing or criminality that you know there is some kind of creative worth in rap and hip-hop that you can make money off that you can support your community off of that you could become enormously powerful and influential off of okay and i think that's really important you're you're You're changing my mind on this.

52:22Yeah, there's a cultural pathway and one that is recognised around the world. And you're right, there would be a time when hip hop, it's a niche thing. It's now everything. And actually, I think if you went and spoke to someone in their early 20s and said, if you described to them the whole Oasis versus Jay-Z beef with Glasto, you told a 21-year-old about that, they'd look at you like you were insane. Because there would never have been a time where rap was not bigger than guitar music. That's true. And actually, the thing I find most instructive about this is Warren Buffett saying that after he met Jay-Z in 2010, Jay is teaching in a lot bigger classroom than I will ever teach in.

52:58For a young person growing up, he's the guy to learn from. And that's Warren Buffett. Wow. Okay, so legacy, you're going to give him? I'm going to give him a nine. Nine? Yeah. Okay, that's a little rich from my blood. I'm going to give you seven. Okay. Okay. So Jay-Z, Sean Carter, is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Well, I am a Jay-Z star. One boy kind of stuff get in the way. Okay. Listen, if you were able to say that George Lucas is a good billionaire, because he only directed four Star Wars films. But he invented the universe. Fine, but take your point. Being a fan is going to influence your vote on this.

53:34Okay. I have to say he's good. Yeah. Yeah. Despite the drug dealing past, the shooting your own brother, the marital infidelity, it's hard not to like JC. I think that he's an aspirational figure to millions of people, including me, to be honest. So I will give here, I'm going to say he's good. Jay-Z is officially a good billionaire. Please invite us to the next... Well, not officially. In my humble opinion, Jay-Z is a good billionaire. You may have your own views. Please invite us to the next Roc Nation party. Oh, yes, please.

54:12Who's our next billionaire? Well, it's a man called Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, but you will probably know him by a different name. El Chapo. That's right. El Chapo, the drug trafficking billionaire. I'm nervous about this one. He is not a man you want to piss off. Let's put it this way. Thank you for listening to Good, Bad, Billionaire. This podcast is produced by Hannah Hufford and Mark Ward. James Cook is our editor and it's a BBC audio production.