Rapper’s savvy made him rich
XXXTentacion was a chart-topping rapper who lived large in South Florida: He resided in a million-dollar home, drove a flashy sports car and went on a shopping spree to donate items to foster kids.
The rapper, whose given name was Jahseh Onfroy, was shot dead last month at age 20. He left everything to his family,
his will says.
Though no one has said how much money he amassed in his career, experts say his business approach gave him greater control of his music career. He remained independent, signing deals with distribution companies to give his music a wider reach.
“Every bit of music that you hear that X has recorded or put out, he controls,” XXXTentacion’s entertainment lawyer, Bob Celestin, told Billboard in a recent interview. “He's just done distribution deals with these various companies. So he controls, or his estate will control, all the master recordings.”
Record labels typically own the sound recordings, which means the label would be taking a cut of those royalties, said Barry Chase, a Harvard-trained entertainment lawyer who practices in Miami and New York.
But if XXXTentacion owned his recordings, there would be no record label taking a percentage of those earnings, and he would stand to make more money outright than an artist signed to a label, Chase said.
Though Chase didn’t represent XXXTentacion, he said he advises other musicians to try to refrain from signing to a label for as long as they can.
“Right now we advise our new clients to go independent, to stay independent as long as possible,” Chase said.
Chase said there are two types of copyrights in music that produce revenue streams: the “composer copyright,” which applies to whoever wrote the song, and the “sound recording copyright,” which covers the artist who recorded the song.
Generally, any rapper such as XXXTentacion likely would be splitting half of the composition royalties with the so-called “beat maker,” or the producer who crafts the instrumentation track that he would rap over.
Anytime a given song is played on radio, the artist would make money. A performing-rights organization, such as ASCAP or BMI in the U.S., would track these radio plays. Chase said royalty checks are mailed to the holders of the copyrights every three months.
Still, a deal with a major record label brings its own benefits, such as clout with radio stations and concert venues, expertise in setting up and financing tours and basically doing things to launch and maintain an artist’s career that the artist may not know how to do themselves. “It is still a good thing to be signed to a label — under the right circumstances,” Chase said.
Long gone are the days when artists relied on album sales to make money. Radio plays pay better royalties than streaming services, Chase said.
For instance, on a streaming platform like Spotify, the average “per stream” payout to rights holders lands anywhere between $0.006 and $0.0084, according to a report on TheVerge.com.
For artists like XXXTentacion, a relatively small amount per stream can result in a windfall if the numbers are big.
On XXXTentacion’s Spotify page, his top 10 most popular songs have a combined streaming total of over 2 billion as of Monday. Spotify didn’t respond Monday to a request for his all-time stream totals and information about how artists are paid.
If XXXTentacion were paid $0.006 per stream, it could mean millions of dollars in earnings from those songs.
Depending on how his business arrangements are structured, those proceeds could be divided by XXXTentacion and the producer who helped craft a song, or anybody else who might be entitled to some money.
Even though big-name artists have their songs widely streamed, they say it’s touring that helps pad their bank accounts. The singer The Weeknd acknowledged this in a 2017 Forbes interview.
“We live in a world where artists don't really make the money off the music like we did in the Golden Age," The Weeknd told Forbes. "It's not really coming in until you hit the stage.”
For an up-and-coming rapper like XXXTentacion, he would probably make between $10,000 and $50,000 per show, Chase said.
It could even be higher than that. Lil Uzi Vert, a rapper whose popularity is comparable to XXXTentacion’s and who attended the public memorial in Sunrise, said on his most recent record that he makes $80,000 per show.
Musicians also get money from publishing, which is the business of licensing songs for things like movies, TV shows, commercials and ring tones. Artists can work with established music publishing companies, whose job it is to find ways to make more money off those songs by selling them.
XXXTentacion enjoyed his success: He reportedly bought several homes in South Florida for his relatives. The Parkland home he lived in was valued at $1.4 million, according to Broward County property appraiser’s records.
In a video posted online in January, he and some friends went on a shopping spree, filling a MercedesBenz Sprinter van with laptops, guitars, TVs and other items that he then donated to children living in a South Florida foster home.
The rapper went shopping for a motorcycle at RIVA Motorsports store in Deerfield Beach on June 18, the day he was gunned down in broad daylight. He was driving his black BMW i8 when he was pulling out of the store. He reportedly had a Louis Vuitton bag filled with money in the car, a bag that was stolen by his killers.
Deputies, who have arrested one man so far, have said the motive appears to have been robbery.
A last will and testament drawn up in November by XXXTentacion doesn’t list any specific assets or a monetary value of whatever assets he owned.
The will designates his mother, Cleopatra Bernard, as the overseer of the will and estate. Bernard, as well as two people listed as his brothers, are listed as beneficiaries.
Neither Celestin, XXXTentacion’s entertainment lawyer, nor Michael Wild, Onfroy’s estate lawyer, could be reached for comment Monday. In an interview with Billboard magazine published Friday, Celestin declined to speak about the rapper’s estate.