Why Birdman Wants To Have Lunch With Oprah (1580 hits)
Zack O'Malley Greenburg, Forbes Staff
Bryan “Birdman” Williams has had plenty of success in his career. After co-founding Cash Money Records two decades ago, he’s grown his roster to include superstars from Lil Wayne to Drake to Nicki Minaj. Today he’s one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in the music business, racking up a personal fortune of $125 million by FORBES’ last count.
But that’s not nearly enough, as far as Birdman is concerned–he has his sights set on becoming hip-hop’s first billionaire. A few weeks ago I asked him what mogul he’d most like to have lunch with; whose brain he’d most like to pick. Surprisingly, his answer wasn’t Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim or even Mark Zuckerberg. Nope, out of all the billionaires in the world, Birdman would most like to have lunch with Oprah Winfrey.
“Oprah came from nothing to something,” he says. “No disrespect to those other names…[but] Oprah is somebody you have to salute for being a black woman who came up in hard times.”
Though Oprah’s earning power is an order of magnitude greater than Birdman’s, the two moguls do have a few things in common. Both are the CEOs of their own companies, and both are involved in the publishing world–Oprah with her O magazine, Birdman with his new Simon & Schuster imprint Cash Money Content.
