Picture yourself back in 1989 in Brooklyn, New York. Your name is Shawn Carter, but your friends you freestyle with call you Jay-Z. Aside from free-styling, you're actually a drug dealer that's just trying to get by day to day. Pops left you and your siblings at a young age and your mom was barely home as she was working hard to get clothes on your backs.

Fast forward to 1996, you get a big break when you dropped your debut album called, “Reasonable Doubt." It becomes a huge success and really gives your rap career a boost. You realize you don't have to sell drugs to make money when all of that is in the music business. Once you got in the music business, you never knew you would make this far as one of the best selling artists in the world.

That's how surreal it was for Jay-Z. He came from the lower class and living in poverty in Brooklyn, to this! He believed that he just couldn't make money off of music because he had seen what happened to big time artists that were in the same situation. He decided to invest and establish himself as an successful entrepreneur. With sports agency, real estate, record labels, and more.

For example, he made $300 Million from Armand de Brignac, $100 Million from his music streaming app “Tidal", and $220 million from cash and investments. With those outstanding numbers, it quickly got him to the Forbes list and made him the first rapper to reach $1 billion.

Whenever he wasn't making business moves, he would provide back to the community and let his voice be heard. From helping his mom letting inner city kids to go to school, to demanding freedom for Meek Mill. With the documentaries about Trayvon Martin and Kalief Browder, it really was an eye opener of how Jay-Z wasn't afraid to speak about what is going on in the black community.

In conclusion, let this be a lesson to anybody that comes from nothing. It's not how you start. It's how you finish!