What Is Dr. Dre's Net Worth?

Throughout his career, Dre has sold millions of albums and singles and been a part of some classic tours.

Songs like ‘Still D.R.E.’, ‘Forgot About Dre’ and ‘The Next Episode’ from his 1999 album 2001 still make him a lot of money with big royalty checks today.

It’s also worth noting that Dre has produced big singles for other artists. A few months ago, KXNG Crooked was talking about working with Dr. Dre and implied that a beat from him costs $250k. Of course, when things get to that price, it’s rare that a musician actually makes that every time they do a song, usually settling for a lower price for a frequent collaborator or a trade of some sort.

Although he’s undoubtedly made millions of dollars over the span of his own career (both with his own music and production for other high profile artists), Dr. Dre has been one of the Hip-Hop artists that has really proved how much other ventures can be financially lucrative.

In March of 1996, Dre left Death Row Records over concerns about Suge Knight’s financial situation. The same month, he teamed up with Death Row’s distribution label Interscope Records to form his own label, Aftermath Entertainment. The same year, he signed Group Therapy, The Firm, RBX, and King T to the label. None of those are massive names but were a great foundation at the time.

To date, Aftermath has been the home of some of the biggest names in the music industry. Some of its former acts include 50 Cent, The Game, and Busta Rhymes. Today, it’s arguably more successful than ever. Current acts under the label are Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and Anderson .Paak. Em has been signed since 1998, Kendrick since 2012 and .Paak since 2016, which means that Dre has made millions off of his own artists. As he bragged on ‘Talk About It’, “still got Eminem checks I ain’t opened yet”.

In the summer of 2018, Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine launched the first line of Beats By Dre headphones, a company that they had founded two years prior. The line consisted of Beats Studio, Beats Tour, Beats Solo, Beats Spin, Heartbeats, and Diddy Beats, the latter pairs being collaborations with Lady Gaga and Diddy, respectively.

For years from that point, it wasn’t unusual to see Beats ad placements in many of the biggest music videos like Keri Hilson’s ‘Knock You Down’, Nicki Minaj’s ‘Pills N Potions’ and Soulja Boy’s ‘Turn My Swag On’, to name a few. Over years, with these placements and collaborations with many celebrities like LeBron James Lil Wayne, they had made a massive name for themselves and Apple took notice.

In May of 2014, it was reported that Apple was in negotiations with Beats to purchase them for $3.2 billion, which would be their biggest purchase of all time. The deal was officially announced soon after, with $400 million paid in Apple stock and the rest in cash. Dre owned 20-25% of the company at the time and the deal is widely known for dubbing him Hip-Hop’s first billionaire.

In 2018, Dre appeared at #98 on Forbes’ list of the year’s highest celebrity earners with $35 million. That was based only on the money he was still making from the Apple deal and music income from his back catalog.