Rappers’ claimed wealth versus actual wealth

Allison McCann for Businessweek graphed rappers’ claimed wealth in their songs versus their actual wealth.

Fresh off of Jay-Z’s new album is the track Versus, on which he chides fellow hip-hop artists and their dubious tales of extraordinary wealth: “The truth in my verses, versus, your metaphors about what your net worth is.” Like Jay-Z, we’ve long been skeptical of just how wealthy some hip-hop stars claim to be, so we created a way to separate the truly rich from the loud-mouth lyricists.

As you’d expect, some rappers tend to exaggerate. Speaking of which, this seems like a good time to revisit the map that shows the area codes where Ludacris claims to have hoes. Unfortunately, there is no data to verify or debunk.