About four years ago, rap mogul and fashion entrepreneur Kanye West was swimming in $53M debt, following his investment in his fashion company, Yeezy. The G.O.O.D Music boss disclosed his financial turbulent on Twitter, which followed with a plea to Facebook‘s owner Mark Zuckerberg to fund his new ideas with $1 billion.
According to the latest report published on Friday by American business magazine Forbes, a publication known for calculating the net worth of celebrities, the world-famous rapper and fashion mogul has provided documents proving he is worth over $1 billion — though he is reportedly still unhappy with it.
However, the Forbes publication notes that Kanye was left unhappy with their research and findings – stating that he believes his net worth to be around $3.3 billion, rather than the $1.26 billion the publication estimated. ‘It’s not a billion,’ West allegedly texted the publication Thursday night. ‘It’s $3.3 billion since no one at Forbes knows how to count.’
However, another business publication Bloomberg reported that Yeezy, Kanye’s high-end sneaker line, was valued by Bank of America Corp. at $3 billion last year before the fashion industry took a hard hit from the coronavirus pandemic.
“All of this is Level 2,” West told Bloomberg. “It’s time to go to Level 3.”
The estimation of Kanye asset was based on his Yeezy sneaker collaboration with Adidas, which Forbes estimated brought him royalties of over $140 million from sales last year, properties, assets, and his G.O.O.D. Music record label, worth at least $90 million.
The final total of $1.3 billion, the magazine said, took into account debts, “asset illiquidity” and the magazine’s tendency to “look at self-appraisals somewhat skeptically.”