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Crissle and Kid Fury of The Read podcast. Photograph: Rebecca Aranda
Kid Fury and Crissle of The Read, a hip-hop and pop culture podcast. Photograph: Courtesy of Crissle and Kid Fury/picture
Kid Fury and Crissle of The Read, a hip-hop and pop culture podcast. Photograph: Courtesy of Crissle and Kid Fury/picture

Listen to This: The Read, with Crissle and Kid Fury

This article is more than 9 years old

The world according to Crissle and Kid Fury: Drake is soft, Macklemore's stale, Beyoncé rules and North West is over it

Welcome to another installment of Listen to This, the series where we share the podcasts we love, and you share yours in the comments below. This week's podcast of note is the pop-culture/advice/life-lesson/comedy show, The Read.

Kid Fury and Crissle West are best friends, and for one hour a week they're your best friends, too. Theirs is a casual but energising voice in the podcast world. If you've heard of Blue Ivy Knowles Carter, this show will hands down make you laugh.

The Read is just 15 months old, and already has over 100,000 subscribers on iTunes and an average of 125,000 listens per episode on SoundCloud. Below we'll break down the details, and then you can hear from Kid Fury and Crissle themselves.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Photograph: Courtesy of Kid Fury and Crissle/picture

What you should know

The show is structured as follows:

Part 1: An overview of the most interesting (or infuriating) stories in hip-hop and pop culture, fused with Crissle and Kid Fury's brazen, curse-filled commentary.

Part 2: The duo responds to listener questions from the mailbag with advice, no holds barred. Their advice is supportive, but don't expect the level of nuance you get from a podcast dedicated strictly to it, like Savage Love.

Part 3: One read each. A "read" is a term that originated from the black gay community in the '80s – it essentially means to vent with purpose. It's as if someone said to you: "Let me tell you how it is, and let's see how you feel after I'm done." The term originated alongside a few others you may know, like throwing shade (talking shit) and spilling tea (gossiping). You can rely on the fact that Crissle and Kid Fury will always have a bone to pick.

Why it's great

The podcast world is one dominated by straight white male comedians reaching middle age. Kid Fury and Crissle are black, gay, young and cool. Their perspective is more sensitive to race, sexual identity and the minority experience than any other podcast that exists right now. Let's be clear: they can be unapologetically mean to the celebrities they cover, for comedy's sake. But they know the line and never cross it. Sure, they'll take the piss out of Keyshia Cole for tweeting about London's Eiffel Tower – but then they'll turn right around and demand basic human dignity for the things that make us different.

Take last week's episode. Crissle's read covered a Joan Rivers stab at transgender people and Katie Couric's uneducated interview questions for Laverne Cox, and it ended with this:

Katie Couric, I know you know better than to call people 'transgenders' as a noun instead of an adjective. You can't just box people into whatever you think makes sense and then be like, "So do you have a pussy or a dick?" Would you ask me about my vagina and its inner workings? Would you ask Halle Berry or Beyonce or Jay Z or anybody else about their genitals? Then why are you asking Laverne Cox or Janet Mock or any other transgender star?

I wish these people who were higher up in media would just take the time and look it up. Google is full and free. And you don't have to get it. I don't understand being transgender because I am not transgender. I will freely admit that. But I will give you the same basic respect that I give everybody else. And if you tell me your preferred pronoun, that's what I'll use. And if you tell me the name you go by, that's what I'll use. Because it doesn't matter if I understand it. It only matters that I'm a decent fucking person."

Where you should start

The Winner is North is a traditional weekly episode that epitomises what's best about The Read.

Really, Nick Cannon? Now we gotta address white people about why you decided to put on Mariah's makeup and go out in public like that? This is one of the times where I really wish Dave Chapelle's racial draft was real. If we could take Jennifer Lawrence and they could have Nick Cannon ... I feel like that'd be an equal trade.

Beyoncé Holiday Spectacular, was planned as a holiday special, but that was before Beyoncé released her secret album ... and Crissle and Kid Fury love Beyoncé. Over the course of almost two hours, Crissle, Kid Fury and two of their friends talk through every song and video on the album. It starts with this:

"It doesn't matter what peasant plans we had before, because ..."
"Beyoncé came through like a thief in the night."
"Snatched my uterus right out of my body."

Then it continues with more astute fawning, like this from Kid Fury: "I feel like Beyoncé and Jay Z are just so much greater than sex. I feel like they just exchange auras."

Crissle and Kid Fury say:

The hosts themselves took some time to fill in the blanks about their own show. Read on!

The Read is for people who ______. It's not for people who _______.

Kid Fury: It’s for people who have a sense of humor. It is not for people who are easily offended. It’s for progressive people.

Crissle: It is not for people who are afraid to think critically. It’s for people who are able to laugh at celebrities and pop culture garbage but who also care about things that actually matter and have a real impact on our lives.

Their favourite episodes:

KF: The Trina Appreciation Day episode. Our friend Freshalina from Crunk & Disorderly came on and told a great story about Drake. She’s the reason I even got into blogging in the first place, so to have her on the show was a full-circle moment for me. We did a bunch of Trina quotes and I obviously love her, so that’s my favorite.

C: That’s my favorite too, but my second favorite are the mailbag episodes, because we get the chance to just go through the inbox instead of discussing celebrities.

KF: One of the mailbag episodes had the “cousin fucker” letter, which is one of our most popular ever. [Editor’s note: it’s a letter about a woman who had sex with her cousin. Surprise!]

C: Yeah, people bring that one up all the time. It’s so gross, though.

An artist that gets too much credit:

C: Macklemore. I feel like white people have heralded him as some great gay-positive savior of rap, and he just isn’t. He’s nowhere close to being the first socially progressive rapper, but good luck telling them that.

KF: It’s because they want hip-hop. They want their own slice of what they think black culture is and they have that in Macklemore. He doesn’t rap about anything that they’re afraid to discuss. His music is about safe shit like Starbucks and old people’s clothes. So yeah, fucking Macklemore.

An artist that doesn't get enough credit (and why):

KF: The first people to come to mind are Ledisi and Kim Burrell. They’re artists who have these crazy voices. The people who know about them recognize it, but more people should know.

C: Emeli Sande. Lianne La Havas. Or Sza. I want them all to be bigger but I also appreciate the underground/indie nature of their work. A lot of music gets ruined once it goes mainstream.

KF: Kelis. Not because of her voice, but for her aesthetic.

C: I don’t think Kelis gets enough credit for being a black girl who went off the path people expected for her and wrote music with a strong feminist voice. Pink got a lot of props for doing that, but I don’t think Kelis did.

Their most universal piece of advice:

C: You have to keep living. Things go wrong and life can be overwhelming. Sometimes it feels like you’ll never stop being angry or sad, but if you just keep living you’ll find a way to get past it and grow and learn something along the way. But you have to keep going. You can’t stop.

KF: I think that we all have the capacity to succeed in the ways that we want to. A lot of people get deterred because of fear or other people telling them they can’t, but I don’t think anyone is smarter or more capable of achieving their dreams than the next person. My advice would be to develop a plan and then execute, instead of just existing.

The one read people need to be reminded of most often:

Both: Say no to fuckboys.

C: We still get letters from people who are dealing with fuckboys and I just want them all to go back and listen to that episode.

KF: We’ve said over and over that there are many different kinds of fuckboys and you just have to know your worth and when to walk away from a bad situation.

C: You really have to love yourself above everything else.

A fuckboy is:

C: A fuckboy is a man who thinks he has the right to expect women to conform to his demands or standards, even though/especially if he doesn't meet those standards himself. He is selfish and misogynistic and to be avoided at all costs.

The best compliment they’ve ever received about The Read was:

KF: We did a live Detroit show, and two different women told us that they’d recently lost their mothers, and listening to The Read helped them get through that loss. That was way too much for me, like I eventually went over to the corner of the stage and started crying.

Crissle thinks you should know this about Kid Fury:

He is a quiet genius. He’s affable and outgoing on the show and in his videos but if you really know him, he is very quiet and keeps to himself and lives inside his own head. But he’s an amazing person and a really good friend.

Kid Fury thinks you should know this about Crissle:

I will fight you over her. She’s smart, kind, and considerate. She’s worldly and has great advice and knows how to keep me centered and in the right direction.

Your turn!

What podcasts do you listen to? Share your favourites in the comments below, and we may feature your suggestions on the Guardian in future posts. Note that our recommendations have been too testosterone-heavy for our liking so far, so if you have a favourite show hosted by a woman, do let us know.

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