Back in 2007 it seemed that rappers had peaked as entrepreneurs. In that year, Jay-Z sold his clothing company, Rocawear, for more than $200m and 50 Cent had a reported $40m personal stake in the $4bn sale of Glacéau, makers of Vitaminwater, to Coca-Cola. But in the past year we have seen bigger and important milestones. In May 2014 Dr Dre sold Beats Electronics to Apple for $3bn. And a few days ago Jay-Z offered $56m for Aspiro, a Swedish music streaming company.

The cliché of the music business is that of the exploited artist. The legendary figures of jazz, R&B, rock and soul often seemed to be on the wrong end of the deal. So why is it that hip hop artists seem to have such facility with commerce, even when many of their contemporaries in other genres still do not?

The answer lies in hip hop’s DNA. The artists developed a sense of entrepreneurship because they had to. Hardly anyone wanted to do business with hip hop. The first rap records were released into the most hostile environment for black music since the 1950s. In the midst of the early 1980s backlash against disco, big music companies viewed rap as an even less palatable offshoot. And so for half a decade independent operators built a scene on their own — until Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons signed a distribution deal for their indie label Def Jam with CBS Records in 1985, when the major could no longer ignore the beats in the streets.