Dean, Kasseem (Swizz Beatz)

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    How Swizz Beatz Climbed to the Top of Saudi Arabia’s Camel Racing Scene

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    “I’m just bringing the cool factor to it,” said the American hip-hop producer, who has spent millions of dollars on 48 camels for a team he calls “Saudi Bronx.”As the Arabian Peninsula’s fastest camels galloped around a track in the Saudi desert, Kasseem Dean, a Grammy Award-winning hip-hop producer from the Bronx, watched nervously from an air-conditioned V.I.P. viewing hall.Waiters in black vests plied the crowd with lemonade and red velvet cupcakes. Women in sundresses milled around off-white sofas, sipping fizzy mocktails.Though the camels sprinting past were the main event, Mr. Dean, better known as Swizz Beatz, felt as if all eyes in the room were on him — one of the newest competitors in Saudi Arabia’s deep-pocketed camel racing scene. Four years since he entered and won his first race, he has spent millions of dollars to buy 48 racing camels, ascending into the most elite circles of the sport.“When you discover it, you enter into a whole other world,” said Mr. Dean, 45, whose team of camels, “Saudi Bronx,” has won trophies across the region and deepened his attachment to the kingdom, which he first visited in 2006.He now travels to Saudi Arabia so often that he considers it a second home. He is a co-founder of a roller-skating rink in the desert retreat of AlUla, where the camel race was held, and keeps an apartment in the capital, Riyadh; a few years ago, he was granted Saudi citizenship.The competitors with robot jockeys on their backs, followed by trainers in SUVs who remotely control the robots.Saudi Camel Racing Federation More

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      Review: Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys Show ‘Giants’ in Brooklyn

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      Right in the middle of the exhibition “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,” which opens Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum, is Kehinde Wiley’s 25-foot-long 2008 painting “Femme Piquée par un Serpent.” Showing a Black man in snappy but casual dress reclined in a distinctively twisted position, with a background of Wiley’s signature flowers, it borrows both title and pose from an 1847 marble sculpture by Auguste Clésinger. What you think of it really depends on what you’re asking for.If you view the painting as a Venti-size iteration of Wiley’s ongoing project, his decades-long attack on the paucity of Black faces in Western museums and art history, it’s one-note but hard to argue with. Brightly colored and thoughtfully composed, it’s visually appealing, and even today, when it’s no longer so uncommon to see Black figures on museum walls, catching sight of one this big still elicits a thrill.On the other hand, considered strictly as a painting, “Femme Piquée par un Serpent” (“Woman Bitten by a Serpent”) doesn’t offer that much. There are no details that you’d miss in a jpeg reproduction, no visible evidence of human hands at play, no sensual pleasure to be found in the surface, nothing surprising, mysterious or engrossing. It’s simply the adept illustration of an idea.Of course, you could also ask for both — for a clear conceptual work about painting (and the historical exclusion of Black subjects and artists) that is also a good painting. If you do, you’re likely to respond to “Femme Piquée par un Serpent” with ambivalence and frustration.Swizz Beatz, in turquoise at left, and Alicia Keys, at right, greet guests at the opening of “Giants,” in front of Kehinde Wiley’s 25-foot-long “Femme Piquée par un Serpent,” from 2008.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesI was thinking about this — about artistic endeavors that succeed and fail at the same time — as I walked through “Giants,” the latest celebrity tie-in exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. (“Spike Lee: Creative Sources” closes on Sunday; a show of photographs by Paul McCartney opens in May.) “Giants” draws on the extensive art collection of the married musical superstars Keys and Beatz (Kasseem Dean), bringing together 98 works — many oversized and of recent vintage — by 37 artists. Most of them are American, but they also come from several countries in Europe and half a dozen in Africa, and they range in generation from Ernie Barnes, who died at 70 in 2009, to Qualeasha Wood, born in 1996.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Grammys Celebrate Hip-Hop History, From Grandmaster Flash to Lil Uzi Vert

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      In what could be seen as an elaborate mea culpa to rap music after decades of friction and perceived disrespect, the Grammy Awards dedicated an extended, centerpiece performance on Sunday to the forthcoming 50th anniversary of hip-hop, going from Grandmaster Flash to Lil Uzi Vert in about 15 minutes.Featuring a taste of some two dozen songs from across decades, regions and movements, the medley — curated by Questlove of the Roots and narrated by his bandmate Black Thought, plus LL Cool J and Queen Latifah — included deep cuts, smash hits and fan favorites in a rapid-fire fashion. The performance celebrated the half-centennial of the genre, which many in the industry have dated to Aug. 11, 1973, when DJ Kool Herc threw a back-to-school party with his sister in the rec room of an apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx.Opening with Grandmaster Flash performing his traditional record-scratching and drum-machine techniques, the first of three segments breezed through the late 1970s and 1980s with appearances by Run-DMC, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Salt-N-Pepa, Rakim and Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Flava Flav. (Jazzy Jeff — along with the Fresh Prince, a.k.a. Will Smith — and Salt-N-Pepa were among the first-ever Grammy nominees in a rap category, though both groups boycotted the ceremony in 1989 because the award was not being televised.)Representing the next waves, including early gangster rap, Southern hip-hop and 21st-century pop crossovers, were artists like Queen Latifah, Big Boi of Outkast and Missy Elliott, who performed her 2005 hit “Lose Control,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. In a showstopping moment, Busta Rhymes transitioned from “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,” his 1997 single, to his 2011 verse on Chris Brown’s “Look at Me Now,” a feat of vocal speed, verbal dexterity and breath control.Moving toward the present day in the high-energy third act, Nelly, Too Short and the Lox made way for the current crop of rap stars, including Lil Baby and GloRilla.Concluding the set was Lil Uzi Vert, hitting viral dance moves alongside LL Cool J, to his Jersey club-influenced TikTok hit “Just Wanna Rock,” as clear an example as any of how unpredictably hip-hop has evolved.Here’s the full set list:Grandmaster Flash, “Flash to the Beat”/“The Message”Run-DMC, “King of Rock”LL Cool J and DJ Jazzy Jeff, “I Can’t Live Without My Radio”/“Rock the Bells”Salt-N-Pepa, “My Mic Sounds Nice”Rakim, “Eric B. Is President”Chuck D and Flavor Flav, “Rebel Without a Pause”Black Thought and LL Cool J interlude (“Rump Shaker”)Posdnuos of De La Soul, “Buddy”Scarface, “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”Ice-T, “New Jack Hustler (Nino’s Theme)”Queen Latifah, “U.N.I.T.Y.”Method Man, “Method Man”Big Boi of Outkast, “ATLiens”Busta Rhymes, “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See”/“Look at Me Now”Missy Elliott, “Lose Control”Nelly, “Hot in Herre”Too Short, “Blow the Whistle”The Lox and Swizz Beatz, “We Gonna Make It”Lil Baby, “Freestyle”GloRilla, “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)”Lil Uzi Vert, “Just Wanna Rock” More