Good Bad Billionaire: Beyonce
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Hello, I'm Simon. And I'm Zing. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. Together, we host Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast that looks at how some of the richest people on the planet made their money. You can find us every week wherever you get your BBC podcasts. We've covered some of the biggest names in tech, sport, entertainment and finance, from Elon Musk to Ronnie Scruvala. Tyler Perry to Michael O'Leary. And even Selena Gomez and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this episode, we cover one of the newly minted billionaires on the list, Queen Bee herself. We hope you enjoy listening.
A young girl just nine years old sweats under the sweltering Texas sun. She is running, her tiny feet are pounding the pavement along the edge of the Bayou River. Five other girls trail behind her. They're all singing at the top of their lungs, harmonising as they go. But none of the girls are hitting the notes quite like our lead. Because this little girl is Beyonce and she will leave everyone in the dust on her journey to becoming a billionaire. Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode we pick a billionaire and find out how they made their money. We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million on to a billion. I'm Simon Jack, the BBC's business editor.
And I'm Zing Zing. I'm a journalist, author and podcaster. And this week, probably one of the top cultural figures of the 21st century. Oh, yeah. And probably the 20th century as well. I mean, we are starting this season with a bang. Have you seen her life? I've seen her life. I've actually seen her life three times. And I was trying to count how much money I've spent on Beyonce in the last 15 years. I reckon probably almost a grand seeing her live. Because tickets don't come cheap, do they? And that is one of the reasons that in 2025, Beyonce was declared a billionaire worth exactly $1 billion. From the very beginning, Beyonce has embodied professionalism, perfection, power. I mean, you just need to listen to her voice to know that.
And capitalism. Let's not forget about that. Ambition, materialism, capitalism, all being pretty overt in some of her lyrics. From her first hit with Destiny's Child, Bills, Bills, Bills. It's a tune. Okay. To declaring herself, and I like this quote, a black Bill Gates in the making on 2016's Lemonade. Yes, you can listen to the Bill Gates episode to decide if she really is the black Bill Gates. But Beyonce is the CEO of what she calls, and I love this, her multi-purpose badass conglomerate. But really, this is a story about an artist who made money from making music. Which is pretty rare. And I like the multi-purpose badass conglomerate. Remember Jay-Z, who will feature in this story for obvious reasons.
He said, I'm not a businessman. I'm a business, comma, man. So what does it take to make a billion and become Queen Bee? Let's travel back to find out. Yes, Beyonce Knowles was born in 1981 in Houston, Texas, in the USA. Her father, Matthew, worked at Xerox selling medical equipment. Her mother, Tina, owned a hair salon that, according to Matthew, made them their first million dollars before Beyonce was even born. And she said, I went to private school. We had a very nice house. We had cars. We had a housekeeper. You can actually Google her family home. It's pretty nice, grand-looking white house, 5,000 square feet, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a swimming pool. So nice. Yeah, so Beyoncé grew up comfortable and everyone describes her when she was growing up as someone who was quiet, who was shy.
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