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OMBS:NICHOLASHUNT/GETTY^IMAGES.SEAN “P. DIDDY” COMBS
S
ean “P. Diddy” Combs isn’t the
first to recognize hip-hop’s
influence on global culture
and commerce, but few have
taken it farther. He began as
a can’t-fail-won’t-fail hitmaker — his
label, Bad Boy, has placed 70 albums
on the Billboard 200 and 102 songs
on the Hot 100, and has generated
63.4 million album consumption
units. He has expanded his empire to
include clothing, beverages and TV.
And through it all, he has consistently
grown his own brand.
Twelve years ago, he leveraged his
power as a pitchman for an owner-
ship stake in Cîroc vodka, entering a
50-50 profit-sharing deal with Dia-
geo, then the world’s largest distiller.
In 2014, he and Diageo purchased the
mega-priced luxury tequila DeLeón in
a 50-50 deal.
The following year, Combs moved
from liquor into the sports-drink
market when he teamed with Mark
Wahlberg to invest $20 million in
AQUAhydrate, an alkaline water
brand. In September, Alkaline Water
Company acquired AQUAhydrate in
an all-stock deal that put its valuation
at an estimated $50 million.
In 2016, Combs sold a majority
stake in his Sean John clothing line,
which he founded in 1999, to Hong
Kong-based Global Brands Group,
which counts Calvin Klein and Katy
Perry among the labels it owns and
licenses, for $70 million. On the TV
front, the cable network that he
launched in 2013, REVOLT, underwent
a restructuring last year but still gives
him a reach into about 50 million
homes. And though Fox’s music com-
petition The Four, for which he was a
panelist, wrapped after two seasons,
he has announced a 2020 reboot of
the 2000s reality series Making the
Band with MTV. —CARL LAMARRE
HALL OF FAME
ANDRE “DR. DRE” YOUNG
H
e has been hip-hop’s master
architect for over three
decades, a beat-maker and
kingmaker for N.W.A, Snoop
Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and
Kendrick Lamar. The label Dr. Dre
founded in 1996, Aftermath, has
logged 31 albums on the Billboard 200
and 124 songs on the Hot 100, with its
catalog accounting for over 112 million
album consumption units.
Beats — the company he
co-founded with Jimmy Iovine in
2008 — expanded Dre’s horizons,
allowing him to shape not just what
we hear, but how we hear it. Beats
grew from headphones and speakers
to a subscription streaming service
in 2014, the same year that Apple
acquired the company for $3 billion
— $2.6 billion in cash and $400 mil-
lion in stock vested over time (which
would be worth $971 million today).
In 2015, Dre and Ice Cube part-
nered to produce the N.W.A biopic
Straight Outta Compton, netting an
Academy Award nomination and a
box-office take of over $200 million.
The film’s companion album, Comp-
ton — effectively Dre’s third solo
studio set — debuted at No. 2 on the
Billboard 200, earned a Grammy nom
and helped launch Anderson .Paak,
thereby extending Aftermath’s legacy.
In 2017, the four-part HBO docu-
mentary The Defiant Ones chronicled
Dre and Iovine’s rule-breaking part-
nership and respective rises, winning
a Grammy for best music film. Iovine
remembers Dre’s singular focus
when he was making The Chronic in
1992: “You couldn’t buy him out of
that studio, no matter how broke Dre
was. They were in trouble; they had
five lawsuits. But he would rather it
not come out unless it’s really what
he wants it to be. And everything he
does, he does like that.”
THIS YEAR, BILLBOARD INTRODUCES THE R&B/HIP-HOP POWER PLAYERS HALL OF FAME TO RECOGNIZE
THOSE WHOSE INFLUENCE OVER ART AND COMMERCE IS EVERLASTING. OUR FIRST TWO HONOREES HAVE
PLAYED CRUCIAL ROLES IN THE EVOLUTION OF HIP-HOP’S CULTURE, ITS GROWTH TO GLOBAL DOMINATION
AND ITS EXPANSION INTO ALL ASPECTS OF THE WORLDS OF BUSINESS AND ENTERTAINMENT
OCTOBER 19, 2019 • WWW.BILLBOARD.COM 6 7