Rihanna, Jay-Z and Kanye West make debuts on Forbes billionaire list /d

Kanye West, Jay-Z and Rihanna perform live together in 2009. Credit: Kevin Mazur/WireImage.

Rihanna, Jay-Z and Kanye West have all made their debut on Forbes’ billionaire list alongside the world’s top earners.

According to the annual list, Rihanna has now become the world’s richest female musician with a net worth of $1.7billion (£1.3bn), largely thanks to her Fenty Beauty business and Savage X Fenty lingerie line.

She sits at number 1,729 on the worldwide list of richest billionaires, with Jay-Z following at 2,076 with a net worth of $1.4bn (£1.1bn), and Kanye, who sits at 1,513.

At the very top of the list is Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose net worth is estimated to be a huge $219billion (£167bn).

Second is Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, who is worth almost $50bn (£38bn) less than Musk with $171bn (£130bn).

2,668 billionaires made the final list, down from 2,755 last year, with the collective worth down from $13.1trillion (£10tn) to $12.7tn (£9.7tn).

Last year, Forbes shared a report claiming that Kanye West is worth less than one third of the amount he claimed.

Back in March 2021, West’s Yeezy deal with Gap was set at $970million (£697million), reportedly bringing the rapper’s net worth up to an estimated $6.6 billion (£4.7billion).

It came after West was revealed to sit only behind Jay-Z as the world’s richest rapper. Last April, after Forbes reported that the rapper was worth $1billion, West disputed the claim, instead insisting that his net worth was actually $3.3billion (£2.6billion).

After the reports of West’s worth being over $6bn, Forbes shared an article disproving the claim. It begins: “Reports that the celebrity is worth nearly $7 billion are based on the magical thinking around sales that don’t yet exist. This is why he’s currently worth less than one third of that.”

In response to the claims that West was now the richest Black person in America, Forbes say the reports are “not true, based on our calculations”.

Kanye became hip-hop’s second billionaire alongside Jay-Z in April 2020.