Kanye West not richest black American — Forbes

The global media company and American business magazine, Forbes has frowned at reports that American rapper, Kanye West is the richest black American.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Forbes focuses majorly on listing and ranking in areas like business, investment, technology, entrepreneurship, leadership and marketing.

The magazine took to its official Twitter account @forbes on Friday.

It wrote, “No, Kanye West is not the richest black American. On Wednesday, multiple outlets reported that Kanye West is the richest black person in America, worth as much as 6.6 billion dollars’’.

The news comes after Bloomberg reported that his sneaker brand, Yeezy as well as Yeezy Gap, which had yet to sell one stitch of clothing have a combined value of as much as 4.7 billion dollars.

“The publication mentioned without going into full details an additional 1.7 billion dollars in assets and it is not true, based on our calculations.

“Forbes estimates he is worth less than a third of that, or 1.8 billion dollars. That’s a big jump from last May when Forbes first pegged his net worth to be 1.3 billion dollars, but nowhere near as much as the purported 6.6 billion dollars,’’ Forbes said.

The magazine noted that Vista Equity’s Robert F. Smith remains the richest black person in the U.S. with an estimated worth of 6 billion dollars.

It also said that Aliko Dangote of Nigeria with 11.8 billion dollars’ worth was the richest black person in the world.

“The sky-high estimate is the latest of West’s attempts to inflate his net worth in the past, he said that Forbes was purposely snubbing me.”

“In actuality, it is nothing personal. The Bloomberg story cites a UBS report on his businesses, the same document Forbes saw earlier this month.

“The bank made a number of assumptions based on projected future earnings, particularly for Yeezy Gap, which hasn’t even been inaugurated yet.

“Bank documents like this are well-known for painting best-possible-scenario future valuations.’’

West had been influential in the 21st-century development of mainstream hip hop and popular music.

He was first known as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the early 2000s, producing singles for several mainstream artists before he joined a solo career as a rapper.

West released his debut album: “The College Dropout’’ in 2004 to critical and commercial success.

He founded the record label GOOD Music and had released different songs.