Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz’s Art-Filled Modernist Home

For more than a decade, Razor House, the stunning cliffside mansion by architectural designer Wallace E. Cunningham in La Jolla, California, has alternately been described as a “magnum opus,” an “architectural masterpiece,” and “America’s coolest home.” But since purchasing the modernist gem in 2019, Grammy Award–winning singer Alicia Keys and her husband, renowned music producer Kasseem Dean (a.k.a. Swizz Beatz), have preferred to call the home where they and their two sons, Egypt and Genesis, now reside “Dreamland.” Explaining the name, Keys says the expansive, nearly 11,000-square-foot residence, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean and is rumored to be the inspiration for Tony Stark’s futuristic bachelor pad in the Iron Man movies, is “a place to create dreams and to be bold enough to dream your wildest dream—for us to even be here is a wildest dream.” AD Mag 2021

It took some time for that dream to become a reality. Dean set a picture of Cunningham’s singular creation as his phone’s screen saver for eight years. During that time the multilevel manse, named after the neighboring Razor Point Trail, appeared and disappeared from the market, but the producer remained hopeful. “I was low-key manifesting it,” he states. When the couple’s real estate agent, Stephen Sweeney, called with news that the house was again available, Dean was elated. “When your screen saver comes to life, it’s unbelievably crazy,” he exclaims. Still, he worried that his wife, born and bred in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, would veto a move to the West Coast. It’s worth noting that one of Keys’s biggest and most beloved hits to date is “Empire State of Mind,” the 2009 collaboration with Jay-Z that has become the unofficial anthem of the city that never sleeps. “She’s Miss New York,” Dean, himself a Bronx native, declares. “They might as well make a sculpture of her the [new] Statue of Liberty.”Dean and Keys’s art collection, amassed over 20 years and totaling more than 1,000 works, is as extensive as it is enviable. Years ago, the couple chose to focus on acquiring pieces by African American and African artists, ranging from Kehinde Wiley and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye to Barkley L. Hendricks and Henry Taylor. They also possess a treasure trove of Gordon Parks images—the largest in private hands. “It really feels like he’s a grandfather to us,” says Keys of the celebrated lensman. “To be able to keep his collection together and for it to live in the home of Black artists is really very emotional for me.”