The hosts of The Read are teaming up with Issa Rae.
The funny podcast hosts, Crissle and Kid Fury are teaming up with Raedio to produce an original comedy album, per Paper Magazine.
“I have been a fan of Crissle and Kid Fury for almost a decade now and The Read has been my weekly comfort food,” said Rae. “I can’t wait for everyone to experience their brilliant comedic commentary in such a specially curated, timeless format.”
The Read podcast kicked off in 2013 and is known for its hilarious commentary on popular culture.
The show, per its website: “Covers “hip-hop and pop culture’s most trying stars,” which means “no star is safe” from its shade or tea spills — “unless their name is Beyoncé. (Or Blue Ivy.),” of course.”
The hosts of iTunes’ no. 1 comedy podcast also spoke on the venture:
“Working with Benoni, Issa and the Raedio team was a natural decision because we have been immense mutual supporters for our entire digital careers. A comedy album is new territory for us, but Raedio has been instrumental in helping us develop the vision for this project, and collaborating with them has been exciting and such a joy. We’re excited to break new ground and give our fans new ways to tune in and engage with us.”
The new project will be produced by Rae, Alex Rago, Raedio President Benoni Tagoe, and The Read hosts, Kid Fury and Crissle will also executive produce.
Crissle, whose last name is West, also took to Twitter to share the great news.
“thank youuuu @IssaRae and the entire team over at @TheRaedio and thank you everyone for your support over the past eight years. what a life,” she tweeted.
The hosts have continued to evolve over the years and even landed a talk show on Fuse in 2019. During an interview with The Washington Post, they dished on how they met and what they thought they would actually be doing with their lives if they weren’t podcasting.
“Twitter. Literally,” said Kid Fury, real name Gregory Smith, in regards to how the duo met.
“I’ve been doing YouTube videos since 2009. I’ve been blogging since 2006, and so I kind of had a small following on Twitter. And she’s naturally funny, so she had a decent amount of followers, too. And because of her funny tweets, I followed her.
“I was like, this girl’s hilarious. We would just tweet each other back and forth all the time. We knew each other through social media, and then, New Year’s of 2012, we were both in Atlanta visiting friends and we met up. We’ve been friends ever since.”
When asked what they thought they would be doing after college, Crissle gave a hilarious but truthful answer:
“Nothing,” she replied. “I was so frustrated with being in Oklahoma and so sick of it, that I really did not have a good plan developed at all. I’m just going to go to New York, and the first place that hires me, I’ll work there.”
She continues with: “And I did. I worked with a magazine for a few months and it wasn’t really a great fit, so I started working a different job as an executive assistant, which I loved very much. A few months after I started that job, he came to me and was like, “Listen, these people approached me about doing a podcast.”
And I was like, “Nobody listens to podcasts.”
But he was like, “We can just go in the studio, we do one episode, it’s no big deal. You don’t ever have to do it again if you don’t want to.” So, we went in the studio and taped the first episode of The Read, and then it just [gesture of explosion]. And the rest is history.”
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