Retch provides an update on the recent Da$H discourse
According to Retch, Da$H's people have since gotten him off the streets and are helping take care of him. He also revealed Da$H's mother once took him in when he was just 15 years old.
A positive update amid concerns 🙏🏽
Apple paid $3 billion for headphones that cost $17 to make. The acquisition has since generated over $100 billion.
A pair of Beats Solo HDs retailed at $199. An engineer tore them apart and found $16.89 in total materials. The two speakers cost $1.80 combined. 30% of the weight came from four tiny metal pieces whose only function was making them feel heavier in your hand. Audiophiles ranked them near the bottom of their price class. Beats held 70% of the premium headphone market anyway.
Wall Street read this as Apple overpaying for a fashion brand. The actual acquisition produced three separate businesses.
First: Apple absorbed Beats Music, killed the brand, and relaunched it as Apple Music in June 2015. That service now has over 100 million paying subscribers and generates more than $10 billion in annual revenue.
Second: Apple kept the Beats hardware line running as a separate brand targeting a younger demographic. Still a billion-dollar product line twelve years later.
Third, and this is the part nobody priced in: the Beats audio engineering team helped build the W1 chip that shipped inside AirPods when they launched alongside the iPhone 7 in 2016. Apple killed the headphone jack the same year, making wireless audio a necessity instead of a luxury. AirPods cumulative revenue crosses $100 billion in 2026. A product that generates roughly $22 billion a year on its own, more than Spotify, Nintendo, or eBay make in total.
Apple paid $3 billion. Got back Apple Music ($10B/year), AirPods infrastructure ($22B/year), and the Beats brand. The acquisition pays for itself roughly every five weeks now.
Dre walked with $750 million pre-tax from his 25% stake. He just hit $1 billion on the 2026 Forbes list, twelve years after Tyrese prematurely declared him hip-hop's first billionaire in a leaked video that reportedly shaved $200 million off the deal.
The whole thing started because Dre complained about plastic earbuds in a meeting with Jimmy Iovine in 2006. Iovine told him to stop complaining and build something. That conversation generated more wealth than his entire discography.