Like so many of us, Caleb Femi spent the depths of the COVID lockdown remembering times when his body was allowed to be freer. Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock (2020), a reggae-tinged filmic portrait of two Londoners meeting at a house party, made him nostalgic for the intangible sense of liberation and possibility afforded us by public gatherings; and a rewatch of Project X, the raunchy 2012 teen comedy by Nima Nourizadeh (another Brit), got him thinking about the actual logistics of parties: the progression of time, the use of space.
But The Wickedest, his epic poem released in the United States last week, is not a COVID-era elegy. A vibe-based, joyously rhythmic movement through a single night at a south London shoob (an organized, underground house party), it’s a deeply human work, pinballing across perspectives—one exhilarating sequence shifts between a couple dancing and one of their exes spying from afar—and picking up on the small details that make these events indescribable: fights almost had, winks barely caught, bathroom doors locked a bit too long. All the while, a playful DJ shouts out what the rest are thinking: “big ups the couple lipsing by the window / you lot been there all night though / you’re blocking the breeze / please / kiss somewhere else.” (Not for nothing did Kaia Gerber’s book club, Library Science, make The Wickedest its pick for February.)
Speaking with Vogue, Femi said the idea for the book stemmed from conversations he’d had with his friend and collaborator Virgil Abloh, whose final show for Louis Vuitton Femi directed.
“We were looking at people like David Mancuso”—a noted American DJ—“and the lineage of partying, of childish imagination and ideas swapping,” Femi says. So, too, were they moved by the community forged in that setting: “After the world has battered you for a whole week, being at a party with people that you love is something that is healing in different ways.”
Photo: Courtesy of Caleb Femi
