The Beatz Goes On
The roster of names Swizz Beatz has worked with in the past two decades reads like a Who’s Who of hip-hop royalty. LL Cool J, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj and Drake. Demand for his Midas touch also comes from the more mainstream with credits on tracks by Whitney Houston, Bono, Gwen Stefani, Rihanna, Beyoncé and of course Swizz’s wife, Alicia Keys. His unparalleled success has earned the 38-year-old Grammy Award-winner the accolade of “the best rap producer of all time”, bestowed on him by Kanye himself. But beyond his musical talents lies the entrepreneurial acumen of Bill Gates coupled with an appreciation of art to rival that of Peggy Guggenheim.
“Growing up in the South Bronx, I always had art around me,” he says. “When you walk outside you see graffiti everywhere and I naturally inherited that in my spirit, along with a love of music. You’d go out and you’d have people performing and you wouldn’t pay them any attention beyond thinking: ‘Oh, that’s whatever DJ. That’s cool. How did they do that?’ But as I got older, the lights started to turn on. I fell for the music first because it was the easier one to understand and it was getting the most attention and then, once I matured and bought my first home, the art started kicking in because I wanted something to hang on the walls. I started visiting galleries and couldn’t believe the prices.”
Swizz’s first piece was an Ansel Adams photograph that he bought when he was 18 and still owns today. The parallel of Adams, too, being a self-taught musician and artist is a comparison not
