Your Favorite Rapper is Poor: The Free Shit Edition

(Note: This is part of an ongoing series breaking down the truth behind hip-hop's smoke and mirrors financial game. For previous entries, click here.)

While a lot of folks have enjoyed my Your Favorite Rapper is Poor series, some people have hated it, those people mostly being those rappers who I'm slowly but surely revealing are broker than MC Hammer. If I could sum up their responses in one sentence, it'd be: "If I'm poor, then how could I own this (insert picture of diamond chain, Bentley, etc.)?" Easy my man, free shit.

For simplicities sake, let's return to my imaginary rapper MC Wannabe, the rapper who had his single "I Wanna Be Rich" blow up and now finds himself a very famous (though completely broke) rapper.

It's one of the cruel ironies in life that the richer, or at least the more famous, you are, the more shit you get for free. Clothing labels who'd love nothing more than the free press they'd get from MC Wannabe rocking their shirt on the red carpet (or TMZ) send free clothes by the caseload. Jewelers are more than happy to throw together a free diamond-encrusted chain for Wannabe on the condition that he tells all the other wanna-bes who covet his chain where he got it. In the end, these retailers will make far more money from all the saps who see MC Wannabe and spend real dollars to be like him than they'll lose from giving away some free diamonds.

The clearest example has to be that oh-so-popular rap phenomenon, bottle popping. Clubs love when famous people, especially famous rappers, visit their joints. So MC Wannabe shows up at Club Banger and he's immediately escorted to the VIP section and promised he'll have all the champagne he and his entourage can drink. (He'll later rap about buying the bar out, but that's just because rhyming about a drooling club promoter offer free bottle service just doesn't sound as cool.) Why would the club give away so much free booze? Because they know there are more than a few dudes in the club who will look at MC Wannabe, want to prove they're high rollers too, and try to outspend Wannabe. Of course what they don't know is Wannabe's not paying a dime, but that won't stop them from throwing down a $10,000 bar tab, and then wondering how they're going to pay their rent later that month.

As long as we're here, I should also mentioned a lot of the shit you see rappers wearing/driving isn't free, it's just rented. Why actually buy a $180,000 Bentley when you can rent one for $3,000, do a video and have everyone assume you actually own it. But that's assuming you can even pay the rental fee. Case in point Nicki Minaj, who's currently being sued because she still owes approximately $15,000 for the pink Lamborghini she rented (and damaged) for her "Massive Attack" video. “Which bitch you know made a million off a mixtape?" I think by this point we all know just how unlikely it is that Nicki actually made a million off a mixtape. A million dollar advance? Maybe - but however much she has in her bank account, it's not enough to make a paying 15 grand in rental fees a small deal.

Free shit is just one of the many very real perks that come with stardom, and rappers have every right to enjoy them. But it's crucial to know that, like so much in hip-hop, the extraordinary material wealth they appear to have is just that, an appearance. An illusion; an illusion that sadly thousands of aspiring rappers go broke trying to make materialize.