Swizz Beatz’s guide to AlUla, Saudi Arabia

Long closed to the outside world, this ancient city is now revealing its secrets. From hot air ballooning to stargazing, here are Swizz Beatz’s picks in one of his favourite places.

Throughout his 25-year career, the celebrity – whose real name is Kasseem Daoud Dean – has worn many hats: entertainer, DJ, producer, art buyer, fashion designer and husband to fellow musician Alicia Keys.

And in 2020, the Bronx-born Dean made history as the first American owner of a Saudi Arabian camel racing team.

The move may have surprised fans, but anyone close to Dean knows about his decades-long love for Saudi Arabia – a passion inherited from his grandfather, who completed the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in 1978. The Grammy winner himself is a practicing Muslim and visits the kingdom regularly.

“It was nowhere near as developed as it is today,” he says, recalling his first visit in 2006. “But you can feel the energy. You can feel the culture, you can feel the craft.”

The SpeciaList

Swizz Beatz is an American entertainer, DJ and record producer. He helms the Saudi-based global creative consultancy company Good Intentions, which helps emerging and world-renowned brands tell their stories.

Dean has travelled all over the nation; lately, most often to the ancient city of AlUla – a dramatic desert valley oasis in north-western Saudi Arabia’s Hijaz region that has, until recently, been closed to visitors. Despite being the site of the Unesco-listed Hegra, the secondary hub of the region’s ancient Nabataean civilisation, it wasn’t until 2019 that the Saudi government began issuing tourist visas for non-religious travel, finally allowing travellers to experience the splendour of AlUla’s 900-year-old Old Town and its otherworldly sandstone and granite mountain landscapes, as part of a $1tn Saudi government initiative to revamp tourism throughout the nation.

Dean has been there every step of the way.

“My relationship with AlUla is like seeing a seed planted in the ground and watching a beautiful flower grow,” says Dean, who was among the first invited to watch the construction of the city’s massive Maraya performance venue – a mirror-clad behemoth rising out of the desert sands – and eco-friendly luxury accommodation resorts like Our Habitas. “Seeing the vision coming to life in front of my eyes has been magical to watch.”

Dean has “lost count” of his visits, but “every month is something new. It’s amazing to see a place thriving off of innovation, arts, creativity and music”.

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