Bryan “Birdman” Williams might be best described as a Frankenstein of conspicuous consumption. Standing outside the studios of
106 & Park in midtown Manhattan, he sports a necklace of gumball-sized diamonds; gems cling to his wristwatch like barnacles to a whale. Even his skin is covered in tattoos of red stars and flaming dollar signs. Every time he opens his mouth, the monstrous diamond grills adorning his teeth sparkle in the midday sun.
Asked about the worth of orthodontic work in mouth, he doesn’t hesitate for a moment: “Half a million.” He grins. “I try to wear $1 million a day. At least.”
Though such tastes may seem a tad
nouveau riche, Birdman has been doing this for decades. As a prominent rapper and co-founder of Cash Money Records, he’s had plenty of opportunities to flaunt his wealth—and plenty of wealth to flaunt. He raked in $15 million over the past year alone, mostly thanks to his share of his label’s profits, fueled by the success of fellow
Cash Kings Lil Wayne, Drake, Nicki Minaj and others. Birdman has had a hand in over 90 million records sold, amassing a personal fortune of $100 million by FORBES’
last count. For Birdman, that estimate is something of an indignity.
“I just felt $100 million was low,” he says, wrapping each word in a deep Louisiana drawl. “With all the different entities, I think I should still be a lot more than that. $500 million. $250 million, easy … As a child I always felt if I could make $1 million, I could make $100 million. If I could get $100 million, I’m just nine steps away from being a billionaire. And that’s the goal.”
Excluded from previous Cash Kings annual earnings lists because we deemed him more executive than rapper, Birdman was included this year because most of his peers now have a similar job description. His earning power—and his spending power—puts most of them shame. He’s been known to show up at night clubs to throw as much as $100,000 into the crowd, and boasts that he keeps $1 million cash under his mattress. He claims he recently lost $2 million on a single bet on the Miami Heat; to balance this out, he plans to place a seven-figure bet on boxer Floyd Mayweather’s match in September. (“And when he fights Pacquiao,” Birdman adds gleefully, “I’m going to bet $10 million.”)
Birdman is spending money like it’s going out of style—and in a sense, it is. Many of hip-hop’s most successful artists have traded glitz and glamour for relative understatement. Perhaps nobody phrased this trend more clearly than
Jay-Z, who rapped five years ago that he was “old enough to know the right car to buy, yet grown enough not to put rims on it.”
The word “bling” itself, which Cash Money’s own Lil Wayne once claimed to have invented, has become essentially verboten for aficionados. The bell may have tolled for the term when it was added to the Merriam Webster dictionary in 2006, or maybe two years later when Mitt Romney uttered the word on the campaign trail. These days its use is reserved strictly for irony and painful attempts by Baby Boomers to get down with the lingo of a younger generation.
Apart from the term itself, the decline of the world economy seems to have made some artists reluctant to broadcast their earnings; Young Jeezy even called a recent album “The Recession.” Birdman doesn’t seem overly concerned—last year he picked up a shiny red Bugatti Veyron for $2 million; in March, he showed off a new $1.5 million Maybach Landaulet; the following month, he tweeted that he’d purchased another for $8 million. So does all this spending make Birdman’s advisors a bit nervous?
“How could I not get nervous?” says business manager Vernon Brown, who’s been working with Birdman for the better part of two decades. “We scream and shout about it, but we’ve been screaming and shouting for 15 years. Basically, he never risks more than he has in his pocket, and he wouldn’t even think of risking anything in his bank account.”
The massive capital outlays do sometimes raise the specter of a liquidity crisis—a legitimate concern for someone whose net worth is largely tied to the value of a single asset, Cash Money Records. Arnaud Massartic, a European entrepreneur who says he’s selling the $8 million Maybach, claims Birdman hasn’t yet paid him; the rapper insists the car will arrive December (along with the presumed winnings from his Mayweather wager). And according to stateside luxury car dealer Marc Stromvig, the Cash Money co-founder has always made his payments on time.
“I’ve sold him 30-40 cars over the past 8-10 years and he’s never had a problem paying his bills,” says Stromvig. “Are there notes on some of his cars? Sure. But there’s probably a note on your car, too.”
At any rate, Birdman should have more fat checks on his way this fall. Before the end of the year, Cash Money is set to release new albums including Lil Wayne’s
Tha Carter IV and Drake’s
Take Care; Birdman’s own solo album,
Bigger Than Life, is slated for release in November.
If the past is any indication, the new releases should add a considerable chunk to Birdman’s coffers. He and his brother, Ronald “Slim” Williams, started their label in 1990 in New Orleans, its offices not far from the housing projects in which they grew up (he returns often, including this past Thanksgiving for his 15th annual turkey giveaway). Cash Money, famed for its minimalist production and syrupy sound, quickly became a dynamo of Southern hip-hop, launching the careers of rappers including Juvenile, Lil Wayne, and Birdman himself, also known as “Baby.”
“Baby has never slept,” says Katina Bynum, vice president of marketing for Universal Motown Records. “Two hours and he’s good.”
The long nights paid off, literally. In 1998, Birdman and his brother secured a distribution deal with Universal, which also advanced them $30 million. They kept the rights to all master recordings and refused to hand over any of their equity in Cash Money. The deal, Birdman says, now gives Universal a distribution fee of just 7% of wholesale on all albums sold. He estimates that his label takes in revenues of over $100 million per year (though net profits are probably more like $30 million).
“A lot of my peers that did this before me, they got the bad end of the deal,” Birdman explains. “They was always funded by the machine, by the label, and never owned nothing … I never wanted us to be artists who, when it’s over, we’re broke, back where we come from, just simply because you sign some shit that say you don’t own nothing.”
Cash Money was one of only a few of Birdman’s possessions that wasn’t swept away by Hurricane Katrina (Birdman’s tally: “20 houses, 50 cars, and memories”). The label’s headquarters have since been relocated to Miami and the brothers have turned their attention to diversification. They recently signed a distribution deal with Simon & Schuster to produce books through a company called Cash Money Content (“I think we should read more”); Birdman claims to have purchased an oil rig (“It’s not pumping right now”). Next up: a clothing line that already has at least one high-profile fan.
“I had to give Justin Bieber a lot of shirts—he’s a friend of the team, and we got a lot of love for Justin Bieber,” says Birdman. “I like the apparel business. That’s another $100 million per year, easy.”
And then, perhaps the realization of his ten-figure ambitions?
“I’ve been thinking, shit, Donald Trump and Bill Gates, they made a billion off one idea, man,” he says. “So every day we’re trying to brainstorm on that idea to get that billion.”
