With the month winding down and Valentine's Day coming and going, there's still quite a bit of love lingering in the air. After all, everyone's love story is different, and since we're huge lovers of love around here, we can never get enough of the ways that people express their appreciation for their partners.
Well, one of our favorite couples, Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz, are showing off their love with a new level of intimacy that we stan; one that has nothing to do with sex. It was all about how she was looking at him for me!
Alicia Keys officially entered the beauty business when she partnered with drugstore favorite E.l.f Beauty to create a lifestyle beauty brand called Keys Soulcare. The brand focuses on wellness and self-care with products that include a face cream, face roller, and candle, all cruelty-free. Keys decided to test her products on her boo, which brings us to a video titled, 'Making Love To Your Face.' And listen, the two mega-stars get busy without ever even taking their clothes off.
The video opens up with the two discussing what Valentine's Day means in their relationship, as Keys lights her Sage + Oak Milk Candle:
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"OK, we're going to light the candle, and I like to light the candle to set an intention," she says, which Swizz agrees.
"You know, what do we want out of this moment? What I want out of this moment, is I just want a deeper connection and like some fun."
Swizz adds:
"I want out of this moment...cleansing."
Swizz then reads the mantra on the candle which states the powerful, "I shine at full wattage." #comethru
Up next, Alicia uses the first product on Swizz, the Golden Cleanser:
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"I love how light it is. It has turmeric in it, it has chamomile. And it has Manuka honey."
According to the website, the Golden Cleanser is peak cleaning goals as its primary skincare benefit is each ingredient (Manuka honey from New Zealand, turmeric and chamomile) soothes and calms as they cleanse. The activated charcoal helps purify and balance the look of skin. The scent of sandalwood soothes and encourages stillness, purifying both the skin and your spirit, giving you the clarity and power to turn everything in your life into gold.
The affirmation instructed for you to cite when using is: "I am devoted to this moment."
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As Alicia washes his face, she says:
"See I'm trying to give you like a sweet experience because we don't have to always go ballistic, although, we love having a great time, but there's so many different ways to have a great time. This is a good one. I recommend this as a good love moment. Good love moment tip."
She then sprays him up with some Reviving Aura Mist. Meanwhile, Swizz is loving it!
Next, they begin to exfoliate his skin, using Be Luminous Exfoliator:
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The Be Luminous Exfoliator has antioxidant-rich Hojicha powder, which provides non-stripping exfoliation for a softer, smoother-looking texture. Lactic acid for skin is a hardworking multitasker that gently exfoliates for a brighter appearance. The exfoliator also polishes the skin and your spirit to leave you shining from the inside out. The affirmation instructed for you to cite when using is: "I am layered, complex and divine."
Alicia applies the product and as she wipes his face, Swizz explains:
"Guys always wait until they break out or something happens and then they want to try to figure it out, when it should be the opposite."
He then exclaims:
"It feels so good, feels like a baby's ass, you feel that!?"
That man really loves him some Alicia!
Watch the super cute video in its entirety below:
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Featured image by Alicia Keys/Instagram
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak