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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.”
Femi’s last book, 2020’s Poor, combined poetry and original photography to chart his rough south London childhood. Though it was hailed by institutions like The Guardian and artists like Michaela Coel, Femi didn’t want to live within its heaviness. Experiences outside of writing, such as directing a handful of short films and a few episodes of HBO’s Industry, also left him wanting to explore different modes of storytelling, leaning more into the realm of the novel than the poetry collection.
He says that with Poor, “I felt I needed to almost prove that the archaic techniques were something I could do.” But publishers were concerned—not only about the book’s subject matter but also its form, which included images. The Wickedest was a different story. “It was one of my mandates, going in from the start: How do we incorporate other forms?” Femi says. “I felt like the nature of partying is fundamentally about stepping out of the frameworks that govern our daily life. That’s the whole point of nightlife, to be freer. The most necessary ingredient for a good party is that nobody feels they have to conform—too much, anyway.”
The son of a former DJ, Femi had his nightlife baptism early, sneaking out at about 13 to the long-running North Peckham Estate house party, which mainly inspired the one in the book. “Even if I was there for 30 minutes, it was enchanting but scary, because I wasn’t meant to be there,” he says. “But I knew it was a space that made me feel safe because of the bond I had with my community. House parties, you’re invited into people’s homes, and there’s something quite sacred about that. As long as someone from the block recognizes your face, you’re allowed in.” Like many hyperintelligent kids, school-age Femi found himself understimulated by his education and went on to spend a few rogue months exploring parties with older teens. “I’ve come to appreciate who I was at that time: the business of my mind, the longing to preoccupy myself and push myself into feeling or into new grounds,” he says.
His field research for The Wickedest led him to Brooklyn, Cape Town, Paris, and Jamaica. Though shoobs aren’t about clout, Femi notes, they do require a certain level of secrecy, so while he largely shied away from “high-street venues,” he found it important to explore clubs like Berlin’s notoriously restrictive club Berghain, which he visited while on location for an episode of Industry.
“The ecosystem of people coming together is something that is so easily targeted,” he says. “Secrecy is perhaps the only way to keep these things in existence”—hence, The Wickedest’s gorgeous final call for discretion once the party’s over.
Authenticity was the highest hurdle for Femi to clear—and helped him to justify all that partying to himself. “It was important to know what the air felt like, what things smelled like, what things slipped through the cracks,” he says. “You have to know how to halo on someone’s face to capture those indescribable moments.”
Femi hopes The Wickedest inspires an appreciation for the “architectural influence on fun and curation” that a good house party can engender—and that, especially following Poor, readers will get the sense that Femi actually enjoyed writing it. His persona as something of a floater at parties—though one who gravitates toward the kitchen, “the designated area for yapping”—is slowly evolving into an active participant on the dance floor.
