Nas may be known as a popular rapper from the 1990s and 2000s, but he has become an even more successful business tycoon.
Although he has made many questionable life decisions, no one can deny that he has been an incredibly smart investor.
All of the money he makes from one of his aspirations ends up funding the next aspiration he has.
Nas is always chasing down his next biggest dreams and not letting anything get in his way.
What Is Nas’ Net Worth?
Nas has a net worth of $70 million, which he has mostly earned through his rapping career that started in the 1990s.
While some of his finest musical work comes from the earlier years of his career, he has managed to become so much more than just a rapper.
Nas was born on September 14th, 1973 to Fannie Ann and Olu Dara Jones.
The rapper’s real name is Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, but he chose to shorten it for a stage name.
One of Nas’s earliest musical influences was his father, who was a jazz and blues musician by trade.
His mother worked diligently as an employee of the United States Postal Service.
When Nas was four years old, he picked up the trumpet, heavily influenced by the instrumental choices of blues and jazz.
However, Nas’s brother grew up showing him rap music, which changed his life forever.
As they got older, Nas’s brother became a rapper and took the stage name Jungle.
Nas was only nine years old when he discovered the new genre of music.
However, things became difficult during Nas’s childhood in 1985 when his parents got divorced.
A couple of years later, when Nas reached 8th grade, he dropped out of school.
Nas never let his past define his present or future.
He knew that he needed to make a name for himself if he wanted to be a professional rapper.
In 1991, Nas was discovered by Columbia Records, thanks to the efforts of his first manager, MC Serch.
His Rapping Career
The first album that Nas released was Illmatic in 1994, which was produced by Kanye West.
Despite all the critical appreciation that people had for the album, it didn’t go gold until January 17th, 1996, and didn’t go platinum until December 11th of 2011.
By 2018, the album had sold more than 1,686,000 copies.
Two years later, Nas released his second album, It Was Written, which ended up becoming the bestselling album that Nas has ever had.
The album has sold more than 2,595,000 copies, with 2,000,000 of those sales happening within the first three months of its release.
I Am… was the third album that Nas put out and his second bestselling album.
Within the first week, he had already sold 470,000 copies and ended up selling more than 2,178,000 copies in total.
This wouldn’t be his only album released in 1999.
Nastradamus followed I am…, but fans were not impressed and considered the album his worst work.
However, it still sold more than 232,000 copies within the first week and became certified platinum less than a month after its release.
Stillmatic is Nas’s third bestselling album, with 342,000 sales within the first week and more than 2,145,000 sales to date.
A year later, Nas released the album God’s Son, which sold 159,000 in the first week and went platinum the following year.
In 2004, Nas released Street’s Discipline, and it sold 1,448,000 copies, making the seventh consecutive platinum album for Nas.
A couple of years later, Hip Hop Is Dead debuted as the number one album on Billboard 200 and sold 355,880 in the first week alone.
Nas has an additional five albums, with the newest being King’s Disease and King’s Disease II.
Mass Appeal Magazine
During the 1990s and early 2000s, Mass Appeal magazine was the place to find all the latest information about up-and-coming and veteran rappers alike.
In 2002, Nas appeared on the cover of one of the issues.
After the magazine had taken a five-year hiatus due to financial struggles, Nas reportedly invested a six-digit figure into the company to help get it restarted.
He also took over the role of Associate Publisher for the magazine.
It was important to Nas that Mass Appeal stayed in circulation because of the culture that the publication represented.
The magazine was started to highlight graffiti artists and teach fellow graffiti artists new techniques or the tricks of the trade.
Although the rapper did consider starting his own magazine, he figured that it would be better to use the foundation that Mass Appeal already had in place to build it back up to its former glory.
By choosing to revive Mass Appeal, there was already nostalgic brand recognition.
Even at the height of his rapping career when he appeared on Mass Appeal’s cover, Nas knew that he didn’t want to rap forever.
He knew he would want something more stable as he grew older and decided back then that he’d become a businessman.
Nas was inspired to diversify his financial portfolio by Magic Johnson.
This ended up being some of the best inspiration he ever took.
Starting Up His Own Sneaker Store
In April of 2014, Nas opened his Las Vegas sneaker store 12AM:Run that is located right on the famous Vegas Strip.
His sneaker store offers top-of-the-line shoes that include shoes by Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and even exclusive shoes designed by Nas himself.
Although the shoes may be expensive, they’re mostly for show, and customers could purchase less expensive items, such as hats, shirts, and other clothing accessories.
12AM:Run is less about the clothing you purchase and more about what you experience in the store.
The store was two stories tall, with the second floor having a DJ booth that was used for in-store parties that occur on the weekends.
Those looking for a more exclusive experience can join the store’s membership club to be able to pre-order shoes and enjoy their private locker room.
Nas decided to go in on this business venture alongside Nick Sakai, Anthony Saleh, and Dee Murphy.
The grand opening of the store was also held with Nike.
Nas believes that the connection between sneaker and hip-hop culture is entwined with one another.
Fashion plays a heavy role in hip-hop and sneakers are the to-go shoes for any occasion, as long as they’re fancy enough.
Growing up, Nas got to see the rise of Michael Jordan’s lines of shoes and he also wanted them.
Even as a child, Nas was a major sneakerhead.
Being able to have the opportunity to follow in his childhood hero’s shoes was one that Nas was ready and excited for.
Google and Yelp both report this retailer as permanently closed.
No other information was found, but all of their social media pages, including Twitter and Facebook, have no posts dated later than late in 2019.
Nas And Hennessy
In 2012, Nas first became the ambassador for Hennessy’s “White Rabbit” campaign.
The campaign was so successful that they brought it back for a second run.
For the release of the White Rabbit campaign, Nas even created his own cognac-based cocktail called the Hennessy Big Apple, which has three forms for mixologists of different skill levels.
Nine years later, Hennessy brought Nas back to be the face of another campaign “Dear Destiny”, which is named after the rapper’s daughter.
In the flagship commercial for the campaign, Hennessy features Nas writing a letter to his youngest daughter about the meaning of black excellence.
The commercial ends with his daughter joining him at the table after photos from her first company’s release flash across the screen.
Destiny Jones inherited her father’s drive for business and started her cosmetic company, Matic Cosmetics when she was only 17 years old.
The campaign was meant to promote Hennessy’s new initiative called “Never Stop Never Settle Society”, which looks to help black entrepreneurs expand their businesses and create family legacies that will serve families for generations.
With help from the Marcus Graham Project and famous faces such as Nas and Destiny Jones, they will hopefully be able to bring more businesses to the table and help these companies expand in a manageable way.
Queensbridge Venture Partners
Despite already greatly diversifying his financial portfolio with music, a magazine, and a clothing store, Nas wanted an easier way to invest even more money into different ventures.
In particular, he wanted a way to invest in the digital space that was so rapidly growing.
Queensbridge Venture Partners is based in Los Angeles, which is perfect for communicating with technology developers who are mostly residing in Silicon Valley.
Through Nas’s newest company, he was able to find and invest in more than 40 different start-up companies.
Queensbridge Venture Partners focuses on finance, health, and music technological advancements.
However, Nas decides whether or not he wants to invest in a company based on management teams.
It doesn’t matter how good a company’s product or service is if they don’t have the right people running it.
Nas looks for management teams and members of leadership who inspire him to see the world in a different way because it tells him that they know what they’re doing and what needs to be done.
Some of the companies that Queensbridge Venture Partners has invested in are Lyft, Tradesy, Dropbox, and Coinbase.
Nas is excited to help innovators get their products and services out into the world, pushing the world’s advancement forward bit by bit.
Changing The Game With LANDR
One of the most impactful innovations that Nas invested in was LANDR mastering, which is an automated mastering program for musicians who may not know how to master their own audio or can’t afford to pay someone else to do it.
LANDR mastering simplifies the editing process by breaking it down into phone-application-like terms and actions that rival the mixes done by professionals.
The system has an adaptive engine that learns, listens, and reacts to your music.
This helps the mastering system avoid all mixes sounding the same.
This means that LANDR will learn what you want from your music over time and adapt accordingly.
Since LANDR is constantly under development and improvement, it is always being updated to make it even better than before.
By allowing musicians to record and master their own music, it allows more musicians to release work that has sound quality that can compete with the music that radio listeners are used to.
Nas is always looking for a way to give back to the music community, so investing in LANDR was an easy decision.
So far, the company has managed to raise $8 million, including the money given to them by Queensbridge Venture Partners.
Although musicians know that artificial intelligence will never be able to produce music as a human can, LANDR offers an affordable starting place for rookie musicians.
Getting Into The Restaurant World
Sweet Chick was started by John Seymour in New York, where Nas was born and raised.
Nas was introduced to Seymour by the CEO of Mass Appeal record label, Peter Bittenbender.
Bittenbender believed that Nas would be interested in what Seymour was working on, figuring that the pair would eventually team up for another business venture.
When Nas first welcomed Sweet Chick to his community, he was elated by the food and people it brought.
He wanted there to be places like Sweet Chick all over the country, so he asked Seymour how he felt about creating a national chain out of Sweet Chick.
Nas loved the friendly, family-like atmosphere that Sweet Chick created.
Seymour was inspired by his father, who had been a bartender for as long as he could remember.
His father knew every regular customer’s name, and it didn’t take him long to learn new faces, which created a sense of community at his father’s bar.
Although the most common order is fried chicken with celery-carrot waffle, Sweet Chick also has dishes such as duck and short rib meatloaf, catfish, or braised octopus.
Some of their most common celebrity clientele include Zendaya, Cameron Diaz, Dave East, and Andre 3000.
How Nas Made Money Off Of Ring
While most of his business ventures have been profitable, there have been very few that are as successful as the investment that Nas made into Ring Incorporated through Queensbridge Venture Partners.
In 2018, Amazon bought Ring Incorporated for $1.1 billion, and Nas made $40 million from his investment in the company.
Ring was the perfect solution to one of the biggest complaints that Amazon customers had, which was not arriving in time to get their package and having it stolen.
Nas claims that his success in his investments doesn’t come from how much money he throws at a company, but how long he took to study the company before making the decision to invest.
Although Ring had been turned down by many other investors, Nas appreciated the invention they had at their fingertips and saw how much it could change the world for the better.
Nas claims that investing your money in companies is an excellent way to grow your wealth, but it can be difficult to determine which projects will earn you money and which will cause you to lose money.
That’s why you should invest as much of your time as your money into a company in order to help them succeed.
Nas Takes Every Opportunity He Can
Nas has completely turned his life around from where he started.
This rapper and businessman went from growing up in the projects to making millions from his millions of dollars.
Despite his exponential financial growth as a businessman, he has never forgotten where he came from or how he got into the position that he’s in now.
Now, his goal is to see more people like himself investing in themselves and their dreams to make the world a better place.
What started with music in the 1990s has evolved into an empire of companies that all answer to Nas.
Every time he sees an opportunity to grow his empire, he takes it and flourishes with it.
From fried chicken to computer software, Nas has shown the world what happens when you spend your time and resources on the future, rather than just feeding into things that you want now.
Nas has gone from being a lyrical storm to a business tycoon over a couple of decades.
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