Rapper, songwriter, producer, fashion designer, presidential candidate of his country and yes, officially, billionaire since last year, all this has been the controversial Kanye West, but is he also the richest African-American man? What has existed in the United States?

The assumption alone gives us many conjectures and questions about the fortunes that other people have amassed with their skin color, but in the spirit of not enlarging this debate, we will focus on the controversy over whether or not it embodies a record in itself.

Those who say that he is

At 43 years old, rapper Kanye West was declared the richest African-American of all time, according to a Bloomberg report by UBS, which values ​​his net worth at more than 6.6 billion dollars.

This spectacular jump is largely attributed to the singer's brand of clothing and sneakers: Yeezy, which are currently valued between 3.2 billion and 4.7 billion.

Kanye West has full ownership and creative control of Yeezy, but also a partnership deal with Adidas and, more recently, another with Gap Inc., raising expectations of his fortune even higher.

The designer West signed a 10-year deal with the latter clothing brand in June last year, a partnership that Bloomberg says could be worth up to $970 million.

In addition, Kanye West reportedly has hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and stock; as well as $110 million from his music catalog (the rapper has released nine studio albums and three collaborative albums to date) and $1.7 billion in other assets, including a stake in Kim Kardashian's SKIMS line.

With all of the above, the rapper would be reaching the level of investor Robert F. Smith, the only other African-American who has forged a wealth greater than 6 billion dollars in the United States.

Both still far from the wealthiest African-American man in the world, the 63-year-old Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote, who has a fortune of 9.98 billion euros.

Those who say it's not Kanye West

Now, although last year he formalized his entry into the circle of billionaires, this time Forbes denies him the title of the richest African-American man in the world, at least for now.

And it is that the publication specialized in calculating the fortunes of the richest ensures that the money that West accumulates is actually just a third of what was mentioned above. That is, about 1,520 million euros in total.

And this is so, he argues, because Gap's assessment cannot yet be taken into account, since the collection has not even started.

They themselves recognize that it is "a big jump" from the almost 1,100 million that they estimated last May, but that it is very far from those 5,580 million euros.

But being or not the richest African-American man in the history of the United States, what no one can deny about Kanye West is his good sense of business, which has led him to coin a fortune that perhaps even he did not imagine, which allows you to maintain the luxurious lifestyle you are used to.