It’s around 6:40 am PST as I begin typing this article. Just a few miles from where I’m sitting, Dr. Dre is probably still asleep in his Brentwood mansion. A mansion he bought from Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen back in 2014 for $50 million, that’s likely worth closer to $75 million today.
In a few hours, Dre will be picked up by a fleet of SUVs and perhaps even a police escort to whisk him 12 miles south to SoFi stadium in Inglewood, California to headline the Super Bowl halftime show.
I have a feeling it will be an emotional drive for Dre. One of the most full-circle, “how did I get here?” moments any individual has ever experienced. Imagine traveling by motorcade from your $75 million gated mansion on a hilltop in Brentwood to headline the Super Bowl halftime show just a few miles from the rough streets where he grew up. I just looked up Dre’s childhood home. It’s an 18 minute drive door-to-door to SoFi Stadium.
Dr. Dre will be turning 57 in a few days (Feb 18). Let’s pretend he had a time machine and went back 40 years. Of the following accomplishments, which would be most difficult-to-fathom for a teenage Andre Young?
- That he eventually became one of the richest and and most-famous celebrities on the planet.
- He’s six-time Grammy winner who has sold hundreds of millions of records as a performer and producer.
- He’s an entrepreneur who sold a company for $3 billion.
- He’s a philanthropist who has an entire school named after him at USC.
- That the Compton High School performing arts center is named in his honor after he made a $10 million donation.
- He is headlining the Super Bowl halftime featuring the Rams at a their home stadium in Los Angeles… a lavish stadium located a mere 18 minutes from his childhood home in Compton.
Frankly, any one of those accomplishments would have melted a teenage Dr. Dre’s mind.
We have been tracking Dr. Dre’s net worth longer than any other outlet online or in print media. That’s a fact. We were the first publication to estimate Dr. Dre’s personal fortune, launching his net worth page in September 2009.
Back then Forbes was still a print magazine that primarily reported on random German industrial magnates. Bloomberg didn’t have an editorial website at all. Bitcoin was just a few months old. Bill Gates was the richest person in the world with a net worth of “just” $40 billion. That net worth today wouldn’t crack the top 30. Steve Jobs was still alive. Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t a billionaire.
When we first added Dre’s net worth to CNW in 2009, we pegged his fortune at $75 million. That number grew slowly for a few years. As you know, Dre’s biggest windfall came in May 2014 when he and Jimmy Iovine sold Beats by Dre to Apple for $3 billion. At the time of the sale, Jimmy and Dre both owned 25% of Beats by Dre and therefore they each earned $750 million pre-tax from the deal.
We learned a whole lot about Dre’s fortunes in December 2021 when he was in the midst of a heated divorce battle with his wife of 24 years, Nicole Young. According to Dre’s court filings, at that point he controlled liquid assets worth between $450 and $500 million. The filing showed that Dre earns an average of $230,000 per month, he sold $73 million worth of Apple shares in the previous 12 months, held $183 million in checking and controlled $270 million worth of personal property.
Eventually Dre agreed to pay Nicole $100 million, with $50 million upfront and another $50 million a year later.
When it’s all said and done, even after the $100 million settlement, today we estimate Dr. Dre’s net worth at…
$500 million
That fortune easily makes Dre the richest performer at the Halftime show (and probably one of the richest people in SoFi stadium), but let’s take a quick look at the fortunes of his fellow performers:
Dr Dre net worth: $500 million
Eminem net worth: $230 million
Snoop Dogg net worth: $150 million
Kendrick Lamar net worth: $75 million
Mary J. Blige net worth: $20 million
Source: Celebrity Net Worth
