NAS, THE NEXT HIP HOP BILLIONAIRE

 Nasir Jones is an American rapper, songwriter, and entrepreneur better known by the stage name Nas. He is considered a legend and one of the best lyricists to ever touch the mic. His music catalog includes 12 studio albums, 7 of which have been registered platinum, selling over 1 million copies in the US alone. Due to the multimillion sales of his albums, he earns a good residual income from them.

Being the brilliant businessman that he is, Nas also has an extensive catalog of business endeavors. While learning throughout his career, he would emerge as a venture capitalist. One of the first businesses Nas got into was the restaurant business. Sweet Chick is a chicken and waffle restaurant that serves the dish with different flavors. The first one was opened by John Seymour in 2013, bringing in Nas later as a partner, and together they have continued to expand the brand. The restaurant has branches throughout Newyork in places such as Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, also expanding outside Newyork to Los Angelos, their newest spot made its debut in London. The privately-owned group of restaurants earns millions each year.

Other companies that Nas has invested in since 2014 include Lyft, Genius, Coinbase, Exo, Dropbox, Houseparty, General Assembly, and the video ring doorbells are also connected to Nas. He is also a founding member of the Queens Bridge venture partners, an investing ring of entrepreneurs. When the Smart Home security company was acquired by Amazon for 1 billion dollars in 2018, Nas made 40 million dollars from the deal.

The Queens Bridge venture partners also turned their stake in Pluto TV into millions of dollars. The group invested in the tv streaming service in 2014, and in 2019 it was sold to Viacom for 340 million dollars. 

Nas also co-owns a record label known as Mass Appeal. The media company doubles in music, film, fashion, television, and soon even toys. Mass Appeal CEO Peter Bittenbender with Nas branched the label out in 2019 and launched a hip hop label arm in India, which was part of their strategy to widen the genre's reach. In addition to signing artists, the company was also planning to launch a kid's line of clothing and toys under the name Major which was to launch in 2019 and was an effort to inspire diversity among future generations.

Mass Appeal also boosts partnerships with larger companies such as Universal Music Group and is worth millions of dollars. Recently Nas has become even richer from the coin base IPO. He was an early investor in the company, and his stake is now worth up to 40 million dollars. The cryptocurrency exchange was valued at 99.6 billion dollars when trading begun and reached a value of over 100 billion dollars in just minutes. 

Named after the place he grew up, the Queens Bridge Venture capitalists have invested in more than 100 companies, including Casper, Fanduel, and Parachute, in addition, to Coinbase which will be significant to their worth if it outperforms expectations to end up with the price per share of 440 dollars as some price targets predict on the higher end, to in turn raise Nas's stake in the company to between 44-220 million dollars. With this occurrence, in addition to the growth of other companies he has invested in, Nas will be closer to becoming the next hip hop billionaire of this generation.

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