Music
Don't let people take your culture, says Swizz Beatz to SA's black youth
American hip-hop producer Swizz Beatz advises local artists and musicians to protect what is theirs
Interviewing hip-hop producer-cum-jack of all artistic trades Swizz Beatz, née Kasseem Dean, requires navigating a few corridors at the Afro-opulent Saxon Hotel in Johannesburg. Along the way the walls are decoratively pockmarked with the kind of African art that tickles noncontinental tourists: masks presumably depicting a fertility goddess, wooden sculptures, Nelson Mandela coffee table books, that kind of thing. It's the kind of art that Beatz, whose Dean Collection and No Commission initiative are rattling cages in the art community, is thankfully uninterested in.
"I started the Dean Collection as a museum that I'm building for my kids and No Commission is something that hopefully they can take on and help with the responsibility of putting millions into artists' pockets," he says.
No Commission, a platform he started in collaboration with Bacardi, gives up-and-coming artists the opportunity to sell their work and keep 100% of the money they get...
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