No Kidding, Swizz Beatz Owns a Camel-Racing Team—and It Could Win Him $21 Million
Forget F1. Rapper Swizz Beatz is the proud owner of a camel-racing team—and a successful one at that.
The Grammy winner, whose birth name is Kasseem Daoud Dean, is currently the first American to own a racing team in Saudi Arabia, and his caravan, dubbed Saudi Bronx, will compete in the AlUla Camel Cup, one of the world’s most prestigious camel races, Bloomberg reported. Set to kick off this week, the four-day event will run from April 24 to April 27, and the winner will take home a whopping $21 million grand prize.
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“It’s a very good investment if your teams are winning,” Beatz told Bloomberg. According to the outlet, the record producer has shelled out millions since 2020, snapping up domesticated camels throughout the Middle East to add to his herd. As it stands, Beatz has acquired a flock of 52 camels with the help of the Bedouin people. Naturally, the animals are named in honor of his kids and close famous friends.
Beatz’s Saudi Bronx will have four camels taking part in the event, and the squad as a whole has already racked up roughly 20 trophies from competitions across the UAE and Qatar, Bloomberg reported. However, he’s not quite ready to bring his talents to the U.S. “I would wanna master it a little bit more and learn and understand a few more things before expanding it to the other side,” Beatz told the outlet. “I don’t think that it will be too long down the road.”
In AlUla, camel racing is considered a revered pastime, and the industry as a whole has experienced a multimillion-dollar resurgence in recent years. Aside from creating his own camel-racing team, the New York native—who’s married to fellow musician Alicia Keys—is also the cofounder of Good Intentions, a creative consultancy based in Riyadh that launched in 2021.
“The easiest thing that I would tell [people] is to take a trip to the country before we have the conversation so you can be educated on what’s happening today,” Beatz said. “Speak to somebody that’s from there and ask them how they feel. There have been a lot of different changes.”
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