The most expensive Picasso, 'Le Reve,' sold for $155 million in March. As we mentioned, he shows up first in 1996 on 'Friend or Foe' and continues to appear later in Jay's career: in Rick Ross’s 2008 “Maybach Music,” on a feature for Robin Thicke’s 2009 “Meiple,” in the 2011 cut “Who Gon Stop Me,” and of course, the song that some say killed performance art, “Picasso Baby.” The best-known Picassos are already in the hands of established galleries, museums, and patrons, so let’s assume Jay owns a smaller, lesser-known painting. It’s probably the cadence and rhyme of Picasso’s name that make him one of Jay Z’s most-rapped artists. But then again, why would Jay want a litho? Of course he'd pick up an original print-we priced Hov's mystery piece somewhere in the $30,000 range. In 2013’s “Oceans,” Jay raps a reference to the street artist behind Barack Obama's official 2008 campaign poster: 'Shepard Fairey, they finally gave me some hope.” Fairey’s original work sells for close to $100,000, and his lithographs go for around $6,000 each. Check out the final results of Estimating the Net Worth of Jay Z's Art Collection. Lastly, we also include estimations for works we’re not positive Jay owns, based on some of his raps, and provide totals for both an imagined, lyrical collection and a real, material collection. First, we decided that the more often Jay references an artist, it increases the likelihood he owns a piece, protecting his investment by name checking the artist. Second, it’s not always clear exactly which piece by any given artist Jay owns, so we used the average price the artist's work fetches at auction. Our guess to how much the rapper has spent on art takes in a number of factors. We decided to calculate the value of Jay Z's growing art collection to our best estimation. And he's clearly visited an institution or two, going simply from “house is like a museum” in 2011’s “Illest Motherfucker Alive” to discerning between The Louvre and the Tate Modern on this year’s 'Picasso Baby,' where he danced with performance art titan Marina Abramovic.

Between 2008, when he told the BBC he's 'into art now,' 2009, the first year he bragged about his art collection on “Off That,” and today, Jay has developed a taste for the finer things, with the help of his art advisor Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn. Jay has conspicuously diversified his tastes and expanded his knowledge of the arts. Since then, he consistently ramped up his association with the fine arts by not only name dropping artists but also buying pricey artworks. On the track it was less about ownership and more about gunplay, but at the least it shows Jay's focus on the art world. Since Jay Z first dropped a Picasso reference back in 1996 on 'Friend or Foe,' it was clear how much he loves visual arts.

Jay z on to the next one art