A ring designed by Tupac Shakur became the most valuable hip-hop artifact ever sold at auction last week.
The buyer, meanwhile, is one of the biggest stars in rap today: Aubrey Drake Graham, usually known only as Drake, purchased the ring at a Sotheby’s sale for a little over $1 million—more than three times the presale estimate of $200,000 to $300,000.
Shakur fashioned the rubies and diamonds set in gold “after the crowns of the medieval kings of Europe in ‘an act of self-coronation,’” says Yaasmyn Fula, Shakur’s godmother and adviser, in a statement from Sotheby’s. The design was also a nod to Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince, which Shakur read in prison.
“We’re thrilled that this exceptional piece has entered a new chapter in the hands of another legendary artist,” says Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture, in a press statement, per Rolling Stone’s Larisha Paul.
For a few days after the auction, the ring’s buyer remained a mystery. Then Drake showed off the fancy bling in an Instagram story, alerting his 141 million followers that he now possessed it. Gil Kaufman of Billboard reports that Drake was also wearing the ring in a recent interview in New York.
