Cam Tatum

Dr. Dre called himself hip hop’s first billionaire on camera in 2014. It took Forbes 12 years to agree. That one video reportedly cost the deal $200 million. In the video below, Dre and Jimmy Iovine tell the story of the night it leaked. Apple was about to buy Beats, the headphone company they built together, for around $3 billion. For weeks, nothing leaked. Iovine called Dre with a warning straight out of Goodfellas. “Don’t buy any furs. Don’t buy cars. Don’t get showy. Don’t move this weekend.” “Got you,” Dre said. That Friday night, Puff Daddy called Iovine, yelling. Dre and Tyrese Gibson were celebrating on Facebook. “The first billionaire in hip hop right here from the West Coast,” Dre told the camera. According to a book by Tripp Mickle, Tim Cook took $200 million off the price. Dre later called that night one of the three most embarrassing moments of his life. Forbes kept him off the billionaire list until 2026. “I don’t chase money,” he told them this year. “I try to make the money chase me.” The case for Dre: it was the biggest night of his career, and Apple signed anyway. On the Street, nobody opened the champagne until the wire cleared. So was one night of celebrating worth $200 million, or should he have listened to Jimmy?