When music producer Swizz Beatz started earning enough money to have his own spot, his taste in interior design was a bit limited. “All I wanted was, like, a white leather couch,” he tells VIBE, recalling the homes of rappers and ballers he admired as a young adult in the Nineties. “I just wanted everything to be white.”
Swizz’s ear — with credits on the “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” and “Check On It” — is a proven entity, and his eye was next. Now, with his own furniture line designed in collaboration with home-goods retailer CB2, the Bronx-born musicmaker and culture shifter has fully embraced his new calling. Yes, there are some white sofas in the mix, but also deep greens, reds, and plums that accent the Casa Dean collection.
Across an assortment of sunken-in leather chairs, couches reminiscent of 1970s conversation pits, vinyl consoles that would make any audiophile jealous, and even sculpture-like coupe glasses, Swizz, né Kasseem Dean, has put his fingerprint on the modern-day home.
“At first, I wanted the entire collection to be all denim … like the denim couch … imagine the chair and everything just denim,” Swizz says, noting that he aimed to make a bold statement with the collaboration by showing off his flair for furniture. But after working with designers like Studio Anansi founder Evan Jerry, Swizz was able to curb and expand his vision. “I started walking through the process more and falling in love with different materials and different swatches … I wasn’t a celebrity, I was a student,” Swizz says. “A lot of people go into these companies as celebrities, thinking that because they made a hit record or the whole world knows them, that they don’t have to learn.”
During the ideation and creation process, Swizz says, he learned to respect the art of furniture making, taking note of table structure and ergonomics of what makes a seat comfortable. “The things that we think [are] so simple — so much time goes into that,” Swizz says. “I look at all furniture different now. It’s kind of like, ‘Man, they probably had to do like 45 takes on this.’”
“We’re drawn to designers with a strong point of view and a perspective all their own,” says Andrea Erman, CB2’s senior director of Design and Development Housewares, of the collaboration. “Casa Dean is a beautiful example of how those individual perspectives can come together to create something unexpected.”
Speaking to VIBE from Paris’ Art Basel, where Swizz mingled with some of the world’s most affluent art collectors, he marvels that the conversations haven’t centered on his massive treasure trove of Black art (the Dean Collection). Instead, the topics have veered toward his interior-design endeavors.
“I actually need a new phone; I didn’t know so many people were into furniture,” says Swizz. “Every single person came up to me talking about CB2. We’re not even in America. I’m like, ‘Man, y’all know about that?’” He says that while overseas, Casa Dean has been getting compliments with thick French accents calling the collection “unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable.”
Casa Dean comes with personal flickers of Swizz’s life. Aside from the obvious (a former DJ designing a DJ console), some of the pieces have more covert connections. New Zealand wool rugs are named after the St. Mary projects Swizz grew up in, and the collection’s Mable lamps, sconces, and light fixtures are named for his grandmother Mable, whose home was formative in Swizz’s life and career. “The first time I seen a turntable as furniture was in my grandmother’s house. I thought it was just a credenza [in her home], until you lifted it up and you seen a turntable in here,” he says. “You slid the door and it was vinyl in there, and then you slid the other door with some chinaware in there.”
In a nod to his grandmother, who showcased unique home items, Swizz dubs his signature home space the “Fourth Floor.” He explains: “It’s really like the grown-up floor; that’s where I would normally be, and coming up with my ideas and using the think chair.”
This sacred space is where he and wife Alicia Keys often host friends, and Swizz has incorporated Casa Dean pieces seamlessly. “I think that any furniture on the fourth floor, my kids would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s Dad.’ But you know, their mom is down there also,” he says. “I didn’t want to be selling people something that I wouldn’t have in my own house. … [Your] loved ones and the love of your house is incorporated into the furniture.”
Swizz is also integrating his own art-centric tastes into the CB2 collection by showcasing large prints and canvases from noted visual artist Megan Gabrielle. At a time when Black art is experiencing valuation disparity, in comparison with its non-Black counterparts, Swizz’s life work of bringing Black creators to the forefront continues with Casa Dean.
“I think that Megan’s such an amazing artist … and everything we do, we want to bring greats with us,” he says. “Black art can never be depreciated. It’s too rich. It’s too powerful. It’s too strong. What people do with it can change the energy or the perception of it. But we buy. We’re buying more art than ever.”
In Swizz’s current phase of life, more than 20 years into his music career, more than a decade of collecting art, and less than a year into his adventures in furniture, the design enthusiast is newly energized. “I think liking something is cool, but you should love what you do. And every day I wake up, I love what I do … even if I’m expressing the talent in a different way,” he says. “I can’t wait to do more. And we just having fun. We’re just getting started.”
