The following article is from Bloomberg
For Ramon Abbas, the Instagram influencer popularly known as Ray Hushpuppi, @hushpuppi, Hush, or the Billionaire Gucci Master, birthdays were always a time for reflection. Reflection and extravagance but then, extravagance was Hushpuppi’s brand, a 365-days-a-year affair, a way of being. On Oct. 11, 2019, the day he turned 37, he was living in a penthouse apartment at the Palazzo Versace Dubai, with a private pool and hot tub on his lanai. A typical hushpuppi post on Instagram, where he had more than 2 million followers, featured Abbas smiling in front of one of his Ferraris or Rolls-Royces, kicking back in his seat on a private jet, or exiting a designer store with a passel of rope-handled bags Hermes, Fendi, LouisVuitton. His look was always flawless: never the same outfit twice, Gucci more often than not. You don’t become the Billionaire Gucci Master any other way.
Even back in 2019, there were questions about how much money Abbas really had and how exactly he’d acquired it. In Nigeria, where he was born, his Instagram presence had turned him into a celebrity adjacent to the biggest names in pop culture. He'd appeared on social media with pop idols Davido and WizKid and soccer players on English clubs like Chelsea and Man City. But Abbas’s wealth was the constant subject of rumors. In the flourishing ecosystem of Nigerian gossip blogs he was “a Nigerian big boy,” shorthand for an online fraudster, or “Yahoo Boy,” who’d struck it rich and showed it off. Abbas dismissed the talk as the jealousy of so many haters, disappointed with their own lives and determined to bring down a self-made man who’d left them all behind.
Whatever the truth, on his 37th birthday, before heading off to a party in his honor in the VIP lounge at the Dubai Burberry store, Abbas paused to acknowledge the fans who’d supported him on his journey from hustling kid to global influencer. “As I turn a year older into my 30s today, I want to celebrate all of you out there,” he wrote on Instagram. The caption accompanied a photo of Abbas in a designer blue track suit, standing in front of a giant sculpture of a Rolls-Royce hood ornament. “Those of you who mostly I have never met, spoken to or anything but have been a strong supporter of me through every situation until this point and still riding for me, I want you to know wherever you are that I celebrate and appreciate you today, today is OUR DAY!”
Several celebrity blogs printed his appreciation in full. The next day, Tammy Abraham, the English striker who’d recently made his debut for Chelsea, posted a photo of Hushpuppi captioned “Happy birthday to my big bro for yesterday.” Around the same time, Abbas was giving a guided tour of his home to a popular Nigerian radio personality named Daddy Freeze. (“What I was trying to achieve with that interview was something close to MTV Cribs,” Freeze told me recently.) With Freeze filming, they wandered through the penthouse as Abbas showed off his clothes and sneaker collections, and went down to the garage to visit the Rolls and Ferraris. “I have four jacuzzis in this house, a sauna, my private pool,” Abbas told the viewers back home. The apartment, he said, cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars for a year.”
When the pair sat down for dinner, they talked at length about online haters, religion, and family. Money came up only when Abbas asserted that he often made charitable contributions that never appeared on his feed. “My heart is pure. I do a lot of good that even a lot of social media don’t have to know about,” he said. “I sleep good at night. When something good happens to me, I know it’s because I did good. Not because somebody promised me money that I did not work for, or money that I don’t deserve.”
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