Welcome to our final Top Shelf episode of 2021. Top Shelf is our series to highlight our favorite

tiny desk contest entries and this week we announce the winner of the tiny desk contest

and that winner is the artist known as Neffi and on this final episode we welcome Neffi. Hello,

Neffi. Hello, I am very happy to be here. I bet you've kind of been happy these past few days

in general. Yes, happy and also like very much so I feel like I'm sleepwalking a little bit

and it feels like I'm having like a giant outer body experience so it's the dichotomy of being

happy and also like wait what is going on. It was this little bit of time before when we when

I called you to the time we announced what is that like I have no idea like you can't really tell

anything I mean you're going to tell your parents or something but what was that period of time like?

Yeah so there was a period of time when you and the NPR team told me and then between the time

period of that and then letting everyone know and that short time frame was weird because it was

like okay like I have this thing that I'm holding on to in my chest and the only people that I

could tell is me and my parents and so it was also kind of nice though because you were like in

your own little bubble. You don't have to be detailed about this but have you gotten any phone calls

that have been surprising beyond mine. Yes, lots of phone calls, lots of text messages and emails

that I somewhat just like wasn't expecting. That's awesome. So I'd love to give people an idea of

like how we and this show how you came to the song you came to and then we can talk about a little

bit about your musical past and so forth and get people to know you and I get to know you a little

bit more than I already do. I mean as a judge of these things I watch thousands of videos and

I don't like digging into past history at all until we've chosen the person because I want to

just go on the one particular video that I've watched in the song that I've heard.

So let's talk about the song, Weight Up. You were living in New York City, you were going to school.

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