GUEST LIST: Shalewa Sharpe

King Krule, iyla, The Voices of East Harlem, Feist, JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown

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Sep 08, 2023

Shalewa Sharpe is hilarious. This is not opinion. This is fact. If a statistician were to chart the last decade of New York comedy shows laugh-wise, there would be a consistent spike in every report of a show she performed on.

Fun fact: I kinda hate? stand-up comedy. It’s an art form with planned obsolescence. The more of it you see, the less you like it…and I’ve seen so much. That being said, I love to watch Shalewa Sharpe perform. I love her observations, I love her timing and I love her wordplay. I’ve booked her on so many shows just to get 10-25 minutes of good stand-up delivered directly to my brain, like a greedy little prince.

If you’re not already a fan, you may remember her totally stealing the spotlight from T’-fuckin’-Challa. It was a segment where she was the one who was supposed to be surprised, but instead, Shalewa surprised the late Chadwick Boseman (and HE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED) by making him laugh his ass off.

What you may not know about Shalewa is the impeccable taste she has, in fashion, eyewear, pins, bags, and of course, music. And much like my “greedy little prince” ways of seeing the comedians I want to see, these Guest List posts are just a formal way for me to get music recommendations from cool people. It would be rude not to share!!

And her picks are exactly what I like to see on these…some stuff I know I love, some stuff I’m loosely familiar with, and some stuff I don’t know at all. And I cosign ALL OF THEM.

King Krule “If Only It Was Warmth”

Like 10 years ago, this dude showed up on my desk and he looked like the fifth member of Fun Boy Three but he sounded like a bratty Billy Bragg and let me tell you, I fell in L-O-V-E love. This track from his recent album Space Heavy is almost a nothing of a song but it haunts me. When I hear it, I start swaying like someone in a youth group, receiving the word from on high, except the scripture is, “I’m running out of space for your mistakes.”

JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown “God Loves You”

I imagine we all spent the summer with the Scaring The Hoes ep by JPEG Mafia and Danny Brown. (If not, snap to it.) This song is also a collab between the Lord and the Devil: God trying to get you to church with them hard gospel beats, Lucifer trying to get you to Hell with the raunchiest lyrics possible. (The video posted isn’t the official video but it’s pretty phenomenal.)

Feist “Love Who We Are Meant To”

I dunno, y’all - Feist popped up and said, “Hey, I’m gonna put out an album this year,” and I thought, “Y’know what? I’m going to listen to your new album because I want to support my peeps even if it’s been YEARS since I thought of them.” And I listened to the new joint Multitudes and it was low-key magical, especially this song which kind of softly knocked the wind out of me. Then I went to the live show and it was high-key magical. Please back away from the boygenius and get reacquainted with Leslie Feist.

Voices of East Harlem “Right On Be Free”

My parents had a lot of records. Some that you’d expect, like A Love Supreme or everything Stevie Wonder did in the 70’s. Some that were very of the time and kinda have been historically lost. The Voices of East Harlem was the latter. I heard this recently at an Alvin Ailey performance and was instantly transported to my childhood. I’m not going to sum them up when there’s a perfectly fine wiki page but I wonder - are we recording children/folks of a region/location anymore? Not like field recordings but like…joyful noise-type stuff. My parents also had a record of very soulful prisoners (I can’t remember the name) and I’d love to hear that shit in the wild.

iyla “FOH”

Iyla’s been bouncing around for a few years now. She dropped an ep, Appetite for Disaster, this year and it’s nice - a jagged jazz number, some Brandy flourishes, a sun-kissed duet with Symba. It’s a lovely listen. Thing is, Iyla’s videos are what bring the boys to the yard. Peruse them at your leisure but start with her masterpiece, “Juice” - it has 9 million views and I am responsible for at least a third of them.

ALL OF THEM.

Check out Shalewa’s podcast with Gastor Almonte (another comedian I like!), which has Capone-N-Noreaga-inspired show artwork, which is the best podcast artwork in the world: