Why Nas makes his hip-hop cash kings debut at 44

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On a late summer Wednesday morning, legendary rapper Nas is lounging in a Scandinavian-chic conference room in the Lower Manhattan headquarters of the venerable hip-hop media company Mass Appeal. Even before he graced the cover of Mass Appeal for the first time in 2002, he was a mainstay of reporting, one of the most influential hip-hop artists of all time.

But he’s not here for another Mass Appeal story. Today Nas, 44, is a co-owner of the company. It’s part of his extensive venture capital portfolio, which includes stakes in startups from Casper to Dropbox – investments often made through his QueensBridge Venture Partners fund (named after the New York City residential projects he grew up on). Pretty good for an artist who was reluctant to achieve business success and always felt more comfortable rapping about African history than launching clothing lines.

“I was a music guy for years, and then suddenly it was like I had reached an age … I think it was just age or just wisdom,” explains Nas in his signature baritone rasp. “I felt it was time now.”

Almost 25 years after his first album was released Illmatic, Nas lands on ours List of hip-hop cash kings for the first time among high-earning rappers after grossing $ 35 million last year. That’s thanks to over 40 shows and a lot of support from Hennessey – and his share of the sale of Ring, a smart doorbell maker, to Amazon. While Nas may have missed the sneaker and streetwear deals of the late 90s, his startup investments have shown him to be a later commercial force and a little unlikely trailblazer.

Take his stake in Mass Appeal, which occupies two floors of a SoHo WeWork building, an industrially stylish room with a pet snake shedding its skin in a neon-lit aquarium (a gift from rapper Young Thug). Mass Appeal was revived five years ago by Peter Bittenbender, co-founder of the creative studio Decon, and Sacha Jenkins, co-founder of Ego trip Magazine.

The latter spent much of his youth in Queens, where Nas grew up with a blues-playing father and mother who worked for the postal service prior to its publication Illmatic, still considered by many to be the best rap album of all time. Jenkins recognized Nas’ talent early on and stayed in touch with the development of Mass Appeal.

“Sacha connected all the dots and called Nas, just like this: ‘Would you like to help?’” Recalls Bittenbender. “That was absolutely not part of his job at the time, but he had a history [with] the brand, so it made a lot of sense. “

Nas came and invested a six-figure sum in a million dollar round with Decon and early stage White Owl Capital Partners. Mass Appeal reappeared in 2013 with plans to become a quarterly print publication. This strategy has now given way to a multimedia approach.

Today, Mass Appeal’s editorial output exists primarily on platforms like YouTube, which is home to its popular video series. There is “Rhythm Roulette”, in which Mass Appeal challenges producers to turn three blindfolded records into a beat from a local record store, and “Open Space”, which offers interviews with prominent guests.

Mass Appeal has also expanded into other areas, founded its own creative agency and released specials such as the hip-hop documentaries rapture and Freshly dressed. Nas contributed to both, arranging a performance for YouTube’s music director Lyor Cohen – the former head of Def Jam Records – who then got Mass Appeal to work on a Google campaign to mark the 44th anniversary of hip-hop with an interactive graphic That was staged by hip-hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy. Nas also helped Mass Appeal arrange interviews with famous friends like Kanye West and Diddy Freshly dressed.

“Hip-hop was so embedded in the lives of so many people who make decisions,” says Jenkins. “Now [Nas is] a moving piece of social capital. This capital is tied into his art and this art opened all these doors, you see? Now people understand that art itself is linked to culture and culture is linked to commerce. “

Nas has followed a similar formula in his other investments. His inspiration came when he met Andreesen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz and at a dinner arranged by his mass appeal investor Steve Stoute around 2012 (“I’m a great foodie,” the rapper says). Two years later, Nas founded QueensBridge Venture Partners with his manager Anthony Saleh. There were also general partners Ajay Relan, Anand Murthy, Craig Vaughan and Dee Murthy (a fifth, Rashaun Williams, has since left the company).

Since then, Nas has received stakes in dozens of startups, either through angel investing or QueensBridge, including many of those scouted by Andreessen Horowitz: Lyft, Genius, and Coinbase, to name a few. He’s not the only rapper with equity stakes, of course. Many of the other hip-hop cash kings have invested in Silicon Valley favorites, from Jay-Z (Uber, stock trading app Robinhood) to Diddy (Spotify), though Nas seems to be the most prolific.

Most recently, Nas helped found Mass Appeal Records in 2014 and released his newest album earlier this year, Nasir, on the label. This came after he managed to convince the Universal Music Group to let him out of the last record of his deal; the record giant also joined him as an investor in Mass Appeal.

“There was no time when [rappers] didn’t think about investing, “says Nas.” The world opens up by chance. “

You can reach Zack O’Malley Greenburg at zgreenburg@forbes.com. Cover photo by Franco Vogt for Forbes.