Chester Jermaine Jennings was born on the 3rd June 1973, in Toledo, Ohio, USA, and as Lyfe Jennings he is best known as a soul and R&B musician – singer, songwriter and record producer. He is also recognized as an instrumentalist, because he plays the piano, bass and guitar. His career has been active since 1980s.
Have you ever wondered how rich Lyfe Jennings is? As of late 2015, it is reported that Jennings’ overall net worth is $500,000, an amount he owes mostly to his successful career in the music industry, but which has been limited by spells in jail.
Lyfe Jennings Net Worth $500,000
Lyfe Jennings was raised with older brother Jay in Toledo. As a very young boy he showed a talent for music and an inspiration he saw in his uncle Keith Doston, who was a singer in the group “KGB”. When he was in elementary school, he started not only performing with the choir at Cavalry Baptist Church, but also writing songs. At the beginning of the 1980s, as a 10-year-old boy he formed the teenage vocal group named “Dostons”, along side Keith Doston’s sons Chris and Tim, and with his brother. Although they were very popular at local talent competitions and accepted by the public, the vocal group soon fell apart. Still, Jennings never gave up on his dream of becoming a widely-known musician, and continued with his career, only this time as a solo act.
Jennings lost his father when he was a small boy, so fell under the bad influence of his local environment; when he was 14-year-old, he became involved in criminal activities and five years later, at the age of 19 in the year 1992, he was convicted of arson and sentenced to prison. During ten years in jail, he had plenty of free time to work on his music career. He learned to play the guitar and started writing his own songs. Thanks to his debut album called “Baduizm of Erykah Badu”, Jennings’ music became deeper. In December 2002, he walked out of prison, and the following day he started recording songs for his demo CD. Soon after, he appeared performing live and won in “Showtime in Harlem”, a musical television competition produced by Apollo Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City, so he moved there. After Lyfe had won this competition, he was offered a number of contracts and eventually he signed with Sony Urban Music.
Lyfe Jennings produced his first studio album called “Lyfe 268-192” – his assigned prison number – released in August 2004. In 2005, he published his first single “Must Be Nice”, which peaked as a top 40 hit on the Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles and Tracks top five category, increasing his net worth to a large degree. His second studio album named “The Phoenix” was released in 2006, and reached #2 in Billboard’s Top 200 albums, and his third album “Lyfe Change” in 2008, had the same place on this Billboard chart. On this album he worked with some of the biggest names of hip-hop music, such as T.I. and Snoop Dogg. These mainstream records increased his popularity, which eventually led to him becoming a leading artist of the R&B scene.
In the year 2010, Jennings produced his fourth album “I Still Believe”, and soon after that, he was sentenced again to prison following an altercation with his girlfriend during which shots were fired, and walked out after three years and returned to his career, with a new studio album called “Lucid” in 2013, which reached the Top 10 of Billboard’s R&B chart. In the summer of 2015, his latest accomplishment in the music industry came out, an album called “Tree of Lyfe”.
Overall, Lyfe is now an extremely popular R&B artist, some of his most popular songs include singles such as “Pretty Is”, which Lyfe describes as a constant struggle with the world and its temptations, but that it is important to know your goals, and how to get to them; a song entitled “Gold”, in which Lyfe talks to his younger self, saying that there is no need to dwell on the past, but that you need to learn on your mistakes. Other songs include collaborations with famous musicians, such as Rick Ross on the song “It’s My Time”, Young Buck and a song “Buck The World”, and many others which increased Lyfe’s net worth.
Regarding his personal life, Jennings has two children with his former girlfriend and manager, Joy Bounds, a daughter with Anita Priestley, and a son – Lyfe Jr – with Marquita Goings.
