Swizz Beatz crowned his queen, Alicia Keys, by presenting her with a new Mercedes-Maybach designed by the late Virgil Abloh.
On Sunday (March 26), the avid car enthusiast posted a picture on Instagram of his Grammy Award-winning wife sitting in the backseat of her belated birthday gift. “Keys open doors [gold key emoji] long live @virgilabloh [palms up emoji] gifts from the Kids to the Queen always,” Swizz wrote in the post.
The new car, which was unveiled at a car show last December, is a Mercedes-Maybach S-Class S680 model and was designed by Abloh before his November 2021 death in partnership with Gorden Wagener, Mercedes-Benz’s chief design officer.
Per Dezeen, there will only be 152 units of the car available when they hit the market in April, and will be designed similarly to a Maybach in that it’s “a two-tone solar-powered car with a transparent hood that was also designed together with Abloh.”
“As Project Maybach was a show car, we had complete creative freedom, allowing us to collaboratively concept what the future of electric travel could look like,” Wagener told Dezeen. “Due to production requirements, we had to take a different approach to the design of the Mercedes-Maybach limited-edition S-Class.”
He continued: “Virgil was a creative that all of us here at Mercedes-Benz hugely admired. Between the innovations possible within the Mercedes-Benz teams and Virgil’s unique capacity as a cultural visionary, the opportunity was really to redefine what a fashion and automotive collaboration could look like.
Alicia Keys — who turned 42 in January — posted the full footage of the gift unveiling on her own IG page. The couple’s two sons, Egypt Daoud Dean (12), and Genesis Ali Dean (8), pulled back a black tarp to show the luxury vehicle.
Everyone was taken aback once they saw the neutral-toned car, including Keys, who was smiling from ear to ear in shock.
“It’s crazy,” she said multiple times. “The wheels… Boys, thank you. Oh my gosh. Woah.”
Check out both posts below:
