Credit Swizz Beatz for landing the most left-field headliner at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach nightlife attention contest.

The hip hop producer, born Kasseem Dean, has been building his presence on the contemporary art scene for a while now. Last year he curated a selection at the satellite fair SCOPE. This year he teamed with Bacardi to host a three-day, admission-free fair of his own in Miami’s Wynwood district that allowed emerging artists to take home 100 percent of their sales. By night the space turned into a venue for a series of concerts with a lineup that included his wife, Alicia Keys, and rapper Pusha T, that had a populist appeal not usually employed in the rarefied art fair air. It culminated on Saturday night with a performance by DMX, the energetic-if-erratic rapper, whom Dean helped break in the late nineties.

“I said you can’t tell me ‘no,’” the producer said, laughing before their performance on Saturday. “He came to soundcheck today! This is first time in maybe 15 years he came to soundcheck. I didn’t even make it to soundcheck.”

The goings on backstage were, maybe needless to say, not the typical Art Basel party scene. Ryan Seacrest was there. Miami fixture and Snapchat genius DJ Khaled greeted friends. It was all by design of Dean, who was unexpectedly candid when asked about his evolution as a collector.

“In the beginning I can say I was collecting for the wrong reasons,” he said. “I was young. A couple of guys took advantage of me. I was collecting for status.”

These days, he said, he’s finding works himself, often via social media where he’s something of a platform for art himself.

“I D.M.; I send comments,” he said, laughing. “I control my own Instagram. I don’t let no one touch my Instagram.”