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Today in Matrix Glitches: Swizz Beatz Is the First American to Win a Saudi Camel Race

The face of someone who knows their camels are fast. Photo: Getty Images

Because 2020 is just making stuff up as she goes along to meet some sort of cosmic word count at this point, Variety reports that Verzuz creator Swizz Beatz has become the first American to win a pro camel race in Saudi Arabia. No, the hip-hop producer doesn’t actually ride the camels himself. He tells Variety that instead of jockeys “there are robot backpacks that go on the back of the camels.” So not only is Swizz Beatz a champion camel racer; he’s a champion robot-backpack camel racer. Swizz bought and assembled a team called Kaseem Abu Nasser, “comprised of 12 fast camels,” and on Thursday, October 22 they won their very first race. This is something of a record for the sport, because Swizz “is not only the first African-American but the first Westerner to own a camel-racing team based in the Middle East.” Swizz explains how he decided to buy a camel-racing team: “This was something my whole family could participate in.” In fact, Swizz “named all of the camels after my family members — my mother, my grandmother, my wife, my children, and me.” That means somewhere in Saudi Arabia, there is a camel running around with a robot on its back named Alicia Keys.

Swizz Beatz Just Won a Camel Race in Saudia Arabia