Two years ago Jay Z became the first hip hop billionaire and in this time the rapper has not only managed to consolidate his empire, but also expand it. As has now been announced, Beyoncé’s husband has just sold 50% of his property. Armand de Brignac champagne, which has owned the luxury conglomerate LVMH since 2014. “We have long admired the success of Armand de Brignac and today we are proud to partner with them,” said Moët Hennessy CEO Philippe Schaus in a statement issued by the company on Monday. For his part, the American singer said he is confident that “the sheer power of Moët Hennessy’s distribution framework, the strength of his unmatched portfolio and his track record in developing luxury brands will give Armand de Brignac the commercial power that it needs to grow even more ”. The French business group specialized in luxury goods, born in 1987 from the merger of the fashion company Louis Vuitton and the Moët Hennessy distillery, has used the latter to materialize the operation with Jay-Z and has added the Armand de Brignac to its portfolio of alcoholic beverages.
According to the rapper’s index in the same note, this new merger is the result of the friendship he maintains with Alexandre Arnault, son of the owner of the LVMH conglomerate, Bernard Arnault. Armand de Brignac champagne, popularly known as Ace of Spades (after the logo, an ace of spades from the French deck of cards, in gold) has grown in recent years to reach the figure of 500,000 bottles sold in 2019. The cheapest bottle is around 300 euros and the most expensive can reach 7,000 euros.
The history of Jay-Z and champagne dates back to 2006, when Frederic Rouzaud, the manager of the company that made the then famous Cristal champagne, came under fire after stating in an interview what he thought about the popularity of his drink among rappers. “What can we do? We can’t forbid people to buy it. ” His response did not please many of the personalities of the hip hop world, who like Jay-Z took it as a racist attack and announced a boycott. Months later, the singer introduced in the video clip of his song Show Me What You Got a new golden bottle, this time by Armand de Brignac, produced by the French company Cattier, thus definitively dethroning Cristal. Their relationship went further and in 2014, Jay-Z ended up acquiring the brand that today it shares equally with the luxury group LVMH.
There is no doubt that it is his most famous asset, since at the end of 2018 the second part of the musical tour he carried out with his wife, Beyoncé, ended at the end of almost four years since his last album (4:44, in 2017), Forbes continues to place the rapper among the richest with a fortune estimated at a billion dollars. Armand de Brignac champagne is not the only drink the 51-year-old rapper has bet on, as part of his heritage also comes from his business at the D’Usse cognac house.
Aware that his name carries enormous weight in the business arena, the Brooklyn-born rapper has managed to target his projects correctly. In 2008 he founded the company Roc Nation, dedicated to the promotion of sports and entertainment events with which he has produced films, video games and music and, since 2019, is responsible for creating the musical performances of the Super Bowl. He has launched his own clothing and fragrance line, designed watches, has an art collection valued at 61 million, including works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, and is a minority shareholder of the NBA team, the Brooklyn Nets, for the which paid almost four million euros. The heritage of the founder of the music platform in streaming Tidal and the one who has become one of the best-selling artists of all time also includes almost 200 million in cash and investments that include a stake in Uber worth an estimated another 60 million euros.
The musician who at age 26 started selling his own CDs and created his own record label to release his first album in 1996 after the big companies rejected it is also not far behind when it comes to real estate. After the birth in 2017 of twins Rumi and Sir, brothers of the oldest, Blue Ivy, nine years old – all three with their names registered to avoid their commercialization – Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who own an attic in the rich neighborhood from Tribeca in Manhattan, they decided to buy other houses. An example of this is the mansion next to the beach that they acquired for 22 million euros on the outskirts of New York, in The Hamptons, and a farm in the renowned urbanization of Bel Air, in Los Angeles, which cost them almost 80 million.
