Heidi Hamilton discusses Kevin Spacey's court appearance and Jay-Z's $1 Billion fortune

Kevin Spacey surprise appearance in court ...Lawyer says prosecution's holding out

Kevin Spacey caught a lot of people by surprise Monday showing his face at a pretrial hearing in his groping case.

The disgraced actor is in a faced off in a Massachusetts courthouse in a pretrial hearing, which pertains to evidence his legal team has been trying to obtain from the prosecution team namely, cell phone data from the alleged victim.

Spacey's attorney gripes that the prosecution had access to the alleged victim's phone in late 2017 for about two weeks, and did not disclose that fact to the defense until very recently ... which Spacey's lawyer is pissed over. He believes there's exculpatory evidence on that phone that can help prove Spacey's innocence, and that the prosecution was purposely hiding it.

Spacey's attorney claimed that messages were deleted from the phone that made reference to the alleged victim's "frat boy" tendencies, and he was never made aware of that until now. He also said a lot of messages and screenshots on the guy's phone have been "cleansed" and deleted that could hurt their case. Long story short ... he's outraged.

Spacey's lawyers also want to get a hold of the alleged victim's mother's phone, because they believe that too could contain messages or information that could help Spacey's case.

The defense implored the judge to send the case to trial ASAP, as they believe the prosecution is inadequately prepared ... and filed charges prematurely without having their ducks in a row. Unfortunately for Kevin and co., that ain't gonna happen. The judge said the nature of the case and the juror selection process alone won't allow the trial to started until the fall, at best.

Artist, Icon, Billionaire: How Jay-Z Created His $1 Billion Fortune

Nine years ago Mogul Warren Buffett realized how impressed he was with rapper Jay Z who is 40 years his junior: "Jay is teaching in a lot bigger classroom than I'll ever teach in. For a young person growing up, he's the guy to learn from." This moment, which was originally captured in our 2010 Forbes 400 package, made it clear that Jay-Z already had a blueprint for his own ten-figure fortune. "Hip-hop from the beginning has always been aspirational," he said.

Less than a decade later, it's clear that Jay-Z has accumulated a fortune that conservatively totals $1 billion, making him one of only a handful of entertainers to become a billionaire--and the first hip-hop artist to do so. Jay-Z's steadily growing kingdom is expansive, encompassing liquor, art, real estate (homes in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, Tribeca) and stakes in companies like Uber.

His journey is all the more impressive given its start: Brooklyn's notorious Marcy housing projects. He was a drug dealer before becoming a musician, starting his own label, Roc-A-Fella Records, to release his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt. Since then he's amassed 14 No. 1 albums, 22 Grammy awards and over $500 million in pretax earnings in a decade.

Crucially, he realized that he should build his own brands rather than promote someone else's: the clothing line Rocawear, started in 1999 (sold for $204 million to Iconix in 2007); D'Usse, a cognac he co-owns with Bacardi; and Tidal, a music-streaming service.

Kasseem "Swizz Beatz" Dean, the super producer behind some of Jay-Z's biggest hits ("On To The Next One," Beyonce's "Upgrade U"), looks at Jay-Z as something others can model: "It's bigger than hip-hop … it's the blueprint for our culture. A guy that looks like us, sounds like us, loves us, made it to something that we always felt that was above us."

"If he's a billionaire now, imagine what he's about to be," Swizz Beatz says. "Because he's only just starting."