THE NEW YORK TIMES
By M.H. Miller
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| Kasseem Dean, a.k.a. Swizz Beatz (second from left), at his home in New Jersey with some of the artists whose work is in his collection (from left): Nina Chanel Abney, Kaws, Jordan Casteel and Cy Gavin. Above them is Kehinde Wiley’s “Femme Piquée par un Serpent” (2008). |
Hip-hops interest in contemporary art is, by now, something of a cliché. American materialism has been at the center of rap lyrics since at least 1982 when Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five rhymed about stolen TVs and “double-digit inflation.” There was the hip-hop producer Swizz Beatz, who had his first hit single in the late ’90s while still a teenager, and who used the money to buy an Ansel Adams photograph. Swizz Beatz, whose real name is Kasseem Dean, lives in a house in Englewood, N.J., that used to belong to Eddie Murphy. [
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| Dean, in a hallway of his home, under a mural by the Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel. |
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| Kerry James Marshall’s “Past Times” (1997). Dean helped facilitate its record-setting sale to Sean Combs in 2018. |
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| Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s “An Assistance of Amber” (2017), which Dean bought last year. |
