Scottie Beam and Sylvia Obell, the multi-hyphenate media darlings and culture connoisseurs, first met and became friends at ESSENCE Fest. Their story reads so much like a perfect Black girl meet-cute, you would almost believe that it was fiction if you didn’t hear it yourself. Over Zoom, Beam and Obell immediately put me at ease, and make me feel like I’m a part of their close-knit friendship. As Black women, our DNA is coded to recognize where we are kept safe, and Beam and Obell are well-versed in Black girl love languages: from early ‘00s references, to the praise of each other’s hair, or our shared love of Beyoncé, the nuanced cultural takes heard on their podcast are borne out of a deep care for Black women.
It doesn’t take long to discover why Issa Rae, the effervescent media magnate and writer-actress-producer extraordinaire, tapped the duo to helm the first talk show on her radio platform, Raedio. Beam and Obell are the real deal; there’s nothing contrived or forced between the two best friends. And with this latest iteration of their podcast (they hosted Okay, Now Listen from 2020 to 2022 and hosted the Netflix mini-series Get You A Me in 2021), called simply The Scottie & Sylvia Show (a name that seems both pointedly and refreshingly anti-pomp), they’re making it known that they don’t want to be seen as mere talking heads. Whether it’s through retweeting support on Twitter or sharing fan comments on the show, engaging with their audience is what makes the work valuable to them. “I think it’s really cool that we create a community that way,” Beam says. “It feels authentic, it feels genuine. And just like [our audience] trusts us with our words, I trust them with their opinion. So it just makes a lot of sense to make sure that we have that relationship.”
Building community has been at the core of what makes Beam and Obell shine, both on and off air. Obell recalls meeting Beam at ESSENCE Fest in 2017 while she was covering the festival for Buzzfeed. Obell worked at Essence previously, and had worked several festivals in the past which had afforded her the kind of insider knowledge and behind-the-scenes access that most newly initiated festival attendees would kill for. “I knew that Scottie was coming from the world of hip-hop which is very male-dominated, so I think it was one of those situations where I recognized that normally in music, that’s Scottie’s world,” Obell explains. “But here, I could bring her backstage or to VIP events with me. And it helped that we just genuinely enjoyed each other’s energy. We became friends really fast.” That friendship was only made deeper by the realization that they’d been orbiting each other for years but had never crossed paths: they attended high schools just 20 minutes from each other, lived in Brooklyn at the same time, and shared many mutual friends.
Beam and Obell’s friendship continued to blossom after the festival’s end, where they’d see each other at events or spend evenings watching Real Housewives of Atlanta or Insecure. They both stress that they never saw each other as a business opportunity either. They were — first and foremost — two Black women who found authentic and safe sisterhood in the other and made sure to let that unfold and develop in a very organic way, long before the thought of joining creative forces ever came up. That natural, impossible-to-fake chemistry between the two is what started them on their path to collaboration. Obell brought Beam on to AM to DM (Buzzfeed’s morning show that Obell hosted and produced) to be a guest on an episode about music. With little prep beforehand, Obell reminisces on how their energy sang on camera: “We were making jokes, finishing each other’s sentences. It looked like we had been doing this for years. And that was the first time I thought, ‘Oh maybe there’s something here.’” It wasn’t until another mutual friend, Jasmyn Lawson, a Netflix TV executive who helped to spearhead the revitalization of Strong Black Lead (the streamer giant’s editorial vertical showcasing Black creators and audiences), approached them with the idea of hosting a podcast together.
Beam and Obell signed their contract two weeks before the pandemic hit and everything changed. Much of their journey has been a lesson in the power of pivoting and knowing how — and more importantly, when — to redirect. Filming and recording their podcast apart and at home wasn’t what they had originally envisioned, but it forced them to reimagine what a podcast could be. No one plans to launch any creative endeavor during a global pandemic, especially one that so heavily relies on in-person chemistry and presence to keep audiences coming back. But this is the magic of sisterhood: when it’s real, it’s felt.
You never need to protect yourself against authenticity. I always want people to tell me what they’re going through because it could free somebody else.
scottie beamThe podcast, titled Okay, Now Listen, was an instant hit. Covering topics that ran the gamut from heartbreak to career shifts, featuring guests like Zendaya and Nia Long, young Black women had found a show that was decidedly for them. The topics were universal, but the care and the love poured into each episode was exquisitely and purposefully specific. Beam and Obell are masters at temperature checking the people who matter most to them: their listeners. They’re able to deftly pick up on nuances both within themselves and from their audience that then guides and shapes the stories they tell. “I think when you’re authentic, it will always free you,” Beam says. “And you never need to protect yourself against authenticity. I always want people to tell me what they’re going through because it could free somebody else. But in order to do those things, I have to be the example that I want to see.”
In their steady determination to remain human throughout this process, Beam and Obell both remind me that they still see this as an active practice, something they’re still trying to get right. For Beam, it’s about figuring out how to find the balance between transparency and oversharing or taking on energies that can become spiritually draining. For Obell, it’s learning how to resist her journalistic tendencies towards favoring distance and remaining an objective conduit. The overwhelming responses they receive both online and in person are what let them know they’re doing something right. Whether it’s DMs from listeners sharing transformative or affirming moments from a recent episode, or fans coming up to them on the street cheering them on, the love the creative duo’s been shown is a true testament to the community they’ve created — a community that promised to follow them after their departure from Netflix and has made good on that promise in droves. Acknowledging this love and making sure they return it is the mission statement of the show.
In an industry that’s still predominantly white and male (only one in three of the top 480 podcast hosts are women, and that statistic only gets smaller for non-white women), it’s obvious why Beam and Obell’s voices are so needed in today’s climate. The tapestry of Black women’s stories is permeated by a seemingly endless loop of suffering, trauma, and resilience. Beam and Obell represent a true possibility model for the everyday Black woman. What do our stories look like when we tell them? When we’re allowed to laugh? To be shy? To be cynical? To ask more of each other? What do our stories become when we feel safe enough to share them because the woman sitting across from you — or in this case, on the other side of the mic — is saying, “I got you.”
People enjoy those episodes so much because we’re more concerned about ‘Who are you as a person? How’s your heart right now? What are you going through?’
sylvia obellBeam recognizes this responsibility and reminds us about the power of pivoting to what, and who, matters. “I have spent hours arguing with people on Twitter. But when you realize that people are dedicated to misunderstanding you, you have to turn to the people who are willing to listen and need to hear you,” she says. Obell echoes this sentiment. She knows that when divisive topics bubble on the timelines, their energies don’t need to go into performing trauma or adding to the online noise machine, subjecting Black women’s stories and pain to even further judgment or ridicule. Rather, their power lies in lifting each other up. “When we do speak on these matters, we speak on them in a very in-house way. We talk to the people who hear us,” Obell says. “If we had our podcast during the height of the Meg [Thee Stallion]/Tory [Lanez] trial, it would have been about lifting Meg up. As simple as saying, ‘Girl. We see you. We know what it is.’ There’s power in learning how to tune out the noise.”
Beam and Obell are learning what it means to embrace being lifelong students of their craft and paving a path forward while having a clear view of where they’ve come from. Beam credits her success to her mother, Shaila Scott, a New York radio legend. In 2022,, Scott was unceremoniously firied from WBLS after 30 years. She is now suing the network for gender and age discrimination, and in the aftermath of her mom’s legal battle, Beam sees the work that she does as crucial, both for her audience and in giving her mom her much deserved flowers. “My mother has done so much. No matter what corporations do, I don’t let that define her,” Beam reveals. “So having the show, any chance I get, or any dead air space that I can fill? I’m gonna say my mom’s name and I’m going to make sure she knows that the praise is well deserved. And to be that example to her now, and for her to watch me do the things that she’s shown me for years, has been one of the greatest gifts that God has ever given me.”
When I ask Obell how her more-than-impressive writing career, that’s allowed her to profile the likes of Serena Williams, Halle Bailey, and Savannah James, has informed the show, she credits the constraints of audio improving her skills as interviewer in both mediums. “With print, you can rearrange the conversation and make it pretty as you’re writing. But with podcasting, people are going to hear how smoothly you ask the question. They’re going to hear how the person answers it — you can’t fix their answers for grammar,” she says. “So I think it’s made me sharper, faster, and better at formulating the questions audibly versus writing.” Additionally, the pipeline created through Obell’s cover story interviews has been a fortuitous benefit to the show, with high profile guests trusting the hosts with their time and stories after experiencing Obell as an interviewer.
“Issa is another person I’ve [profiled] where I’ve written about her and we’ve interviewed her on the podcast, and I think it’s cool to see that dynamic. Scottie and I are both skilled interviewers, and that’s why people enjoy those episodes so much because we’re more concerned about ‘Who are you as a person? How’s your heart right now? What are you going through?’ Seeing that style come to audio is really cool because you get to hear the inflections, the laughs, you can feel the ‘girlfriends’ dynamic, the Blackness — all of that is very evident in audio and I love that about it.”
In her1977 novel Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison wrote, “if you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.” Scottie Beam and Sylvia Obell embody that quote. Their journey from friendship, to Netflix, to Raedio has seen many peaks and valleys in their respective personal and professional lives. But they’ve stayed true to their path and, more critically, they’ve stayed true to themselves. Beam and Obell have tapped into the frequency of “Black Girl Magic” that Morrison was writing about. This kind of magic can’t be commodified or packaged for easy replication. No; this magic is what results from the deep knowing that your win is my win is our win. Sisterhood is what saves us. It’s our liferaft in a sea designed to drown us, and Beam and Obell are not only committed to keeping us afloat but also making sure that no one will ever have the power to silence any of our stories again. Beam and Obell have tuned out the noise, and when you do that, you release the baggage that weighs you down, and you can soar. This is what it means to ride the air. To use your voice as a tool for liberation. That’s the reciprocity of Black womanhood that has kept us flourishing for millennia. From mother to daughter, writer to subject, friend to friend, sister to sister, it’ is the uplifting of all through one — or in this case, two. And when you’re listening to The Scottie & Sylvia Show, Beam and Obell want you to know they’re listening to you, too.
