1. Justin Timberlake bought part of Myspace
A pretty big side business that’s often forgotten about. After starring in The Social Network, he took a major stake in Facebook in a $35 million deal. This was in 2011, when he hoped to ‘better the community‘.
Let’s check out how that’s going six years later…
Well, em… Let’s just hope he kept his receipt.
2. Jessica Alba runs a nappy company
It’s really nothing to be scoffed at. Her business ‘The Honest Company’ is worth at least $1 billion. The Honest Company was set up in 2008 to provide non-toxic household and baby products. It was founded on Alba’s belief that ‘everything that touches you and your family – everything in your home – needs to be non-toxic.’
3. Jamie Foxx and Tom Selleck both own avocado farms
The pair are actually neighbours. Jamie first spoke about his avocado farm while promoting Django Unchained. His pet horse Cheetah also acted in this movie. Himself and Cheetah ride their horses around the avocado ranch, where he owns 800 avocado trees.
One avocado tree can produce 200-300 avocados per year. That’s 160,000 avocados. A millennial’s dream but also definitely enough avocados to buy a house with.
Tom Selleck owns 30 acres of ranch in which he grows avocados. Neighbours began to notice a huge dip in the water supply and hired a private investigator to figure out what was happening.
It turned out that Tom Selleck had hired someone to drive a water tanker to drive to nearby towns and steal water from municipal hydrants. He was fined $21,000 for doing so.
4. Erykah Badu has delivered 40+ babies as a doula
A doula is a birth companion, or a non-medical person who assists women before, during or after childbirth by offering physical and emotional support. The first woman she supported through birth was in labour for 54 hours.
That’s no reflection of Badu’s ability to deliver a baby, but rather an example of that woman’s nightmare labour experience. Badu described that woman’s experience like so:
If you can imagine lying on a railroad track and a training is running over your body… Every six.
Having three children herself, Erykah knows the struggle. After assisting this woman through 52 hours of labour (without sleeping) she decided that she wanted to be the ‘welcoming committee for new spirits coming into the world’ After that she began to study and became a doula.
5. Rob Lowe owns a line of cosmetics for men
Rob Lowe is in his mid-50s, so everyone should be paying attention to whatever he’s doing to stay so youthful. He sells eye cream, a face scrub, cleanser, sunscreen and shaving gel under the brand Profile.
Jessica Alba will be glad to know that the products are all certified ‘Toxic Free’.
6. Brad and Angelina were vintners
The pair bought a $60 million vineyard in France in 2012 and held their wedding in it in 2014. They decided to sell their 150 acres of vineyard during their divorce but produced Jolie-Pitt Château Miraval rosé during their marriage which sold out almost immediately and was named the ‘Best Rosé in the World‘ by Wine Spectator.
7. Venus Williams is an interior designer
Venus has obviously been playing tennis from a very young age, but that did not stop her from enrolling in fashion school at age 18, where she realised that design and the arts were her greatest passions after tennis. So she set up Vstarr Interiors. Some of her work at Vstarr interiors includes designing hotel suites.
As if she doesn’t have plenty on her plate as it is, she also wants to work towards helping people in low income areas get access to healthier food.
8. Jay Z owns a champagne company
In 2006, Frederic Rouzaud (manager of the company that makes Cristal champagne) was asked what he thought about the popularity of his champagne among rappers.
He replied “That’s a good question, but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would appreciate their business” as if there was something wrong with the fact that rappers buy it. The remark was not received kindly and many people felt that there was a racist undertone to it.
So Jay Z called for a boycott of Cristal and decided to make and publicly sell his own champagne instead. It’s called Armand de Brignac, but is nicknamed Ace of Spades. Now Cristal rarely gets mentioned in rap music unless it’s something along the lines of when A$AP Rocky said “Cristal go by the cases, wait hold up. That was racist.”
9. Snoop Dogg co-owns Reddit
Snoop Dogg (alongside Jared Leto) co-owns Reddit. He has been an active participant on the site for years and moderates the sites thread for marijuana enthusiasts. It’s not clear exactly how much he paid for his stake in the company, but himself, Leto and several other investors collectively paid $50 million at the time of the deal.
10. Drake has a new sushi restaurant in Toronto
Drake’s currently hiring, so if you’re emigrating to Canada any time soon and know how to make sushi, drop him a CV. It’s called Pick 6ix. The former executive chef of another Toronto seafood restaurant posted a message in a Facebook group, looking to hire experienced sushi chefs. He also added that he’s not ‘at liverty to give out any details of the restaurant at this point’, as there’s a media statement coming soon.
