When you’ve been a celebrity for a while, it’s easy to start thinking that you can get anything you want and not have to pay for it. In a lot of cases, that ends up being the scenario. Celebs (including rappers) get paid to show up at night clubs, wear fancy clothes, do sponsored Tweets or Instagram posts, product endorsements, and they seldom have to take out cash to pay for anything. But there are also some cases when rappers have agreed to pay for certain goods and services, and somehow they just refuse to honor their obligations. Below is a list of 8 popular rappers who didn’t pay their bills.
Tyga:
Tyga has been in the news a lot lately for two reasons. First off, he’s signed to the label YMCMB, and it looks like he’s currently disgruntled with how plans are going with his upcoming album release. He’s also rumored to be dating the 17-yr-old Kylie Jenner – and this is getting a lot of buzz in the gossip vines too. But did you know that in 2011, Tyga was sued by his accountant for $13,000 dollars in unpaid credit card bills. His accountant Robert Seltzer allowed his client Tyga to use his credit card for charging hotel rooms, food, transportation, etc. Tyga proceeded to rack up the charges and he never paid up. He was eventually ordered to pay up by a judge and the final amount he had to fork over was close to $17K.
Kanye West:
So we all know that Kanye West and the paparazzi don’t necessarily see eye to eye. There’s actually an incident that reportedly happened last year that a lot of people haven’t heard about. Apparently after the physical scuffle that Kanye had with a paparazzi photographer at LAX in 2013, Mr. West invited the photographer (and his family) out to an expensive dinner at Nobu in Los Angeles to convince him not to file any charges. The dinner apparently went really well until the photographer admitted that he wasn’t dropping the charges. Upon hearing this, Kanye lost his temper, flipped the table over and left the restaurant without paying the exorbitant $12,000 dollar bill. Before leaving, Kanye reportedly said, “By the time he pays that off, his kids will be taking pictures of my kids’ kids taking a s**t?” Isn’t that one of the craziest stories you’ve ever heard?
Sean Kingston:
With every passing year, it seems that the erstwhile pop star Sean Kingston seems to get less and less relevant. He hasn’t had a bona fide hit in a long time and this year he was sued by an NYC jeweler named Avi da Jeweler for not paying up on all the jewelry he bought. According to Avi, Kingston purchased well over $200K in bling and all of the seven checks that he wrote bounced. When TMZ reached out to Kingston, a rep of his stated that: “Mr Kingston has paid well over $300K for jewelry that was appraised at far less than that and has cashed checks to prove it. Mr. Kingston fully intends to fight this lawsuit in a court of law.” It will be interesting to see where this one ends up.
Lil Wayne:
There is no doubt that Lil Wayne is a millionaire many times over, but sometimes, as it turns out, it’s the ones that have the most money who refuse to pay their bills. Earlier this year, Weezy was sued for over a million dollars by Signature Group LLC, a private jet company in Miami. The suit was filed against Weezy aka Dwayne Michael Carter and the charges were for missed payments, charges and fees on a leased Gulfstream jet that had been in use since 2006. One of the reasons why the bill got so high was because of all the upgrades added to the services including: satellite phones, custom phone and medical equipment. The case is still currently pending.
B.O.B:
There are issues of rappers just shirking their bills and then there are some cases when a rapper just acts plain cheap. The following story falls in the latter category. Atlanta rapper B.O.B. performed at Cornell University in 2011, and after the show he rolled through a local club called Level B with his manager and entourage to have some fun. After they drank it up and ordered 3 bottles of Grey Goose, they left the club without paying. The manager had to chase the crew down and when he caught up with them, his manager said something along the line of “people pay us to come to their clubs” and we shouldn’t have to pay for drinks. No money was exchanged that night but word finally got back to the rapper that people were calling him a deadbeat. So he advised his manager to contact the club manager and settle the bill. The tab was for $1060, but for all the inconvenience, B.O.B. did the classy thing and offered the manager an even $2k.
Bow Wow:
Young rapper Bow Wow aka Mr 106 and Park has had a long history of not managing his finances well. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that he’s been a celebrity ever since he was just a young kid so it’s taking him a while to really get smart about his finances. In 2009, a judge in Georgia ordered that Bow Wow be arrested on site because he owed a tour bus company over $100,000. There are also several other stories in the news about him not being able to keep up on payments with luxury cars he’s purchased. Someone please get this rapper an accountant.
50 Cent:
A big part of 50 Cent’s gangster cred when he was first starting out in his career was that he got shot 9 times and still survived. However what a lot of people may have missed is that the doctor who helped patch 50 Cent up after all those bullet holes actually got stiffed for his medical services. Apparently the doctor named Nader Paksima was owed more $32,500 for treating the NYC rapper and providing post-surgical care. It’s almost fifteen years later and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is worth a couple of hundred million dollars – at this point in time, that bill has probably been settled and taken care of.
Drake:
Drake is one of the most popular (and richest) rappers in the game, so it was surprising to hear about this one. According to TMZ, a stylist named Michael Raphael claimed that Drake hired him for styling, clothing and graphic design services at a monthly rate of $39,583. Apparently the service was not only for himself but for his entire OVO music label. The stylist also claimed that he incurred a lot of expenses on Drake’s behalf for dropping major money at stores like Nike, Diesel and American Rag. Apparently all the expenses came up to $76,490, and Raphael took the matter to court last year to get all the money owed to him.