Rappers often sing about money, and money gravitates toward hip-hop. But it wasn't always that way. 'Three Kings' tells the story of the rise of the genre's wealthiest figures—Dr. Dre, Diddy, and Jay-Z—to worldwide fame and status as business geniuses. Their credits include S. Carter sneakers, Beats headphones, Ciroc vodka, and Revolt TV—it seems as if these three can turn any idea into gold. However, their lives also included failures, wars, and inevitable losses—their intuition and methods were literally forged on the streets at a time when rap was a marginal and dangerous phenomenon, not the universal language of the planet.

American journalist and Forbes author Zack O'Malley Greenberg reveals the cultural and economic history of hip-hop through the biographies of three kings: from painted subway cars and the first attempts to rap to a beat to platinum records and multimillion-dollar advertising contracts.