Kanye West is a billionaire, but he thinks “no one at Forbes knows how to count” after the outlet confirmed he is worth $1.3 billion.
The rapper was said to be unhappy after Forbes refused to call him a billionaire last year because West had not provided documentation that would prove he’s a billionaire.
“When we featured West on the cover of Forbes last summer, delving into his incredible success with Yeezy, he seemed pleased at first. His world-famous wife, Kim Kardashian West, even tweeted her congratulations, to the positive affirmations of 32,300 of their closest Twitter friends,” Zack O’Malley Greenburg wrote.
“But without sufficient documentation on his unusual stake, versus just his word and industry guesstimates, we didn’t call him a billionaire.”
He said that “West directed his team to provide what we feel is an authentic numeric look into Kanye, Inc.” last week.
The financial magazine estimates that West’s stake in Yeezy put him over the billionaire mark and estimate that he is worth $1.3 billion.
The Through the Wire rapper argues that he is worth over $3 billion instead of the $1 billion that Forbes reported.
“It’s not a billion,” West texted Forbes. “It’s $3.3 billion since no one at Forbes knows how to count.”
O’Malley Greenburg claimed that West is “as overly boastful as his political idol, President Donald Trump” and explained how Forbes landed on the $1.3-billion amount.
“For years, Forbes had an informal ‘Trump rule’ — take whatever the future president insisted he was worth, divide by three, and start honing from there. Like mentor, like mentee,” O’Malley Greenburg wrote.
“Welcome to the 10-digit club, Kanye. You may not like our number, but you’ve joined the highest company in that regard,” O’Malley Greenburg added.
West joins his sister-in-law Kylie Jenner on Forbe’s billionaire list.
In March 2019, Jenner, 21, was named the youngest-ever self-made billionaire by Forbes magazine.
Forbes estimated that Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics is worth at least US$900 million, and she owned it all (before selling $600 million in her beauty business to Coty, a New York-based cosmetics company that owns many international brands, including CoverGirl, Gucci and Tiffany & Co.).
She hit the billion-dollar mark when you add in cash she has already pulled from the profitable business, the magazine said.
Jenner told Forbes the milestone is a “nice pat on the back.”
“I didn’t expect anything. I did not foresee the future,” Jenner, who is the youngest billionaire in the world, told Forbes. “But [the recognition] feels really good.
“I see [Kylie Cosmetics] going very far,” Jenner said. “I work really hard.”
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