I'm always surprised when these guys who are worth 10s, if not 100s of millions of dollars somehow manage to go broke. Not just broke in the sense that maybe their money is tied up in investments, but broke in the sense that they can't even come up with the amount of money it takes to pay the lease on a car that doesn't even cost that much money.

Regular everyday black people broke.

Take for example Scott Storch. He's so broke, he's actually on the run from the law. The other day, a guy from the LA Times asked Fiddy Cent if he knew where Scott Storch was, and he had to front like he didn't know. Fiddy did mention that Scott Storch has got some beats on Before I Self Destruct, so he should be alright once the royalties from that start rolling in. But then it was announced just now that Before I Self Destruct has been pushed back to some time in 2009. And let's keep it real. No one's gonna buy that shit anyway. That's why it got pushed back in the first place. Scott Storch is pretty much fucked.

If you look at the money Scott Storch owes, it's actually not that bad. But I guess it is pretty bad, in the sense that he can't come up with an amount of money that would have been chump change to him as recently as a couple of years ago. His main problem is that he owes something like a half a million dollars, or maybe more than that now, in property taxes on that ridonkulous house he owns down in Florida. You'd think it would be nothing for him to put the house up for sale and just downgrade, but he's probably fucked, given the fact that the real estate market right now is fucked the fuck up.

I read somewhere recently that whatever bank he deals with actually put the house up for sale on Craigslist for $7 million, despite the fact that it had been appraised at $16 million as recently as last year. His lawyer tried to have it taken down, but from what I understand, they still might go through with it. If they do, that would be a pretty ridonkulous L. (I remember he also once sold a yacht that was said to be worth $20 million for $600,000 on eBay.) If I was Timbaland, I'd cop that shit myself just for shits and giggles, and maybe even shoot a video there like Storch's own hilarious "Built Like Dat."

A lot of the rest of the money he owes is actually pretty nickel and dime - a few grand in back child support here, a few payments behind on some shit that doesn't cost that much money in the first place there - which makes me wonder if he really is on the run somewhere living hand to mouth, or if he's got a few mil somewhere stashed away, and the reason he's not paying even his lightweight bills anymore is to throw off the scent. Because he's Jewish, I suspect that it's the latter. (My bad, Jews.) Damon Dash, meanwhile, is obviously broker than a motherfucker.

Here's how one lawyer who's privy to Dame's financial situation put it:

"I've worked with musicians, artists and entertainers that in the eyes of the media are very wealthy," said lawyer Jason Gabbard, who represented a fashion firm that settled a suit against Dash and his wife over $148,505 in unpaid fees. "But to borrow a phrase from my Kentucky homeland, they haven't got a pot to p--- in - they're broke."

Yikes!

If you look at the people coming after Dame these days looking for money, it really does sound like the kind of shit that takes place when you literally have no money at all. For example, it's one thing that the bank is foreclosing on his two condos in Tribeca, worth a combined $7.3 million, and for which he hasn't paid the $78,000 a month mortgage in some time now. I could understand wanting to get out of a situation like that, now that it's clear that he's never gonna make a dollar in the music business again. But he also had his Chevy Tahoe repo'd just the other day for failing to make payments on the lease.

The fuck?

First of all, what kind of hip-hop mogul do you know who drives a Chevy Tahoe? That's not even an Escalade! (Never mind the fact that a Tahoe and an Escalade are probably essentially the same thing. It's just not hip-hop to own the less expensive version of some shit.) They don't even let put TVs in the head rest of a car you lease, do you? It must have been tough explaining to Jim Jones that he couldn't smoke weed in the car, because he couldn't afford to cop it outright. That's the kind of indignity you're supposed to suffer if you're the nightside assistant manager at K-Mart, not the guy who discovered Jay-Z.

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