Y’all Get Back Now: Big Freedia (show postponed)
More : Benni E, Big Freedia, I Love Neon, Le Belmont, the heart is a pump
Big Freedia has made New Orleans into a musical hub such as it has not been in decades by tirelessly touring her recent Azz Everywhere album, which she last performed pieces from at Club Soda in August, 2011. She was to headine a show at Le Belmont this Sat. July 7, but due to a medical emergency, has had to cancel her date. Shaydakiss, DJ Cassenoire and the Eklectiks will be the consolation dance-party makers with MC Benni E.
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Via the Facebook event page:
“Due to a medical emergency, Big Freedia has been forced to cancel her tour. We wish her a fast recovery, and are already working on a make up date with her management. Tickets will be refunded at the door. Tonight’s event is still going on with Benni E, The Eklecticks, DJ Cassenoire, & Shaydakiss! Only $5 for a great show and lots of dancing!!!”
It isn’t often that you need to stretch before a concert, especially when you’re not the one performing. For Bounce shows, this is normal. The barely-there boundary between performer and audience is constantly breached by hordes of fans, sweating madly as they climb on stage to grab their ankles and bounce their asses til their backs give out, intoxicated by the energy of the hard-edged hip-hop-style music, the crowd, and Freedia herself. You don’t go to see a Bounce show, you go to experience it.
The reigning queen of Bounce music is a powerful queer soul from New Orleans who is known as the one and only Big Freedia (pronounced Free-da). Her 2003 EP Queen Diva secured her reputation in her home town, but it was last year’s Azz Everywhere that solidified her status as more than an underground hip-hop phenomenon. She became a star.
Azz Everywhere album cover, Big Freedia
“For Mardi Gras I rode in three different parades, it caused a lot of media attention, I passed out thousands of CD’s – I was looking fabulous and sparkling all over,” Freedia tells me as she rolls into Tulsa, Oklahoma for another steamy club show. She’s been living on the road more or less since her “Azz Everywhere” track created a Bounce sensation across the continent, and beyond. She’s performed at stadium venues and more intimate clubs from Milan to Melbourne, Paris to San Francisco. Although she will always call NoLa (New Orleans, Louisiana) home, she admits “it’s not important for me to be at home now. I gotta keep working for my fans.” Hence the break-neck touring schedule which has her in Montréal between stops in LA and Indiana.
Since 2010, her fans have gotten both hungrier and more famous. Meeting Montréal electro band Lesbians on Ecstasy at a US music festival in 2010 led to a friendship and then collaboration on their 2011 single “She Likes to Party” which became a great excuse for Freedia to come back and deliver more infectious staccato beats and riotous call-and-response MC’ing, such as to the classic Freedia tune “I’m got some gin in my system / somebody’s gonna be my victim,” which makes even the soberest person in the room want to get down. Since then, she recorded a track with none other than Miss RuPaul that will feature on the Drag Race diva’s as yet unreleased album. The track is called “Peanut Butter” and yes, RuPaul fans, it’s available on iTunes.
For her Montréal show, Freedia will be throwing down two or three songs from her forthcoming album,The Idol. “Hopefully you’ll be hearing a track from Diplo’s album; there’s a lot of people who have been wanting to work with me and reaching out. You’re gonna see a lot of versatile stuff coming from me,” she promises, saying that the new tracks have something to offer both as spoken word and as party music.
Bounce music is about the physical experience of a crowd of people dancing: even though there are back-up dancers, anyone can get up on stage when called and either booty battle or just “pop your p,” which if you haven’t seen live before is reason enough to come. Imagine kids of all genders and body types dancing face-down ass-up. Now imagine the ass-shaking going on for an hour and a half, spurred on by a fearsome queer queen from the Big Easy. Big Freedia defines the Bounce genre, and her following keeps growing because of her strong “worth ethic and people skills,” she contends.
“Everything I have been doing lately has been blowing me away, people coming up and saying they’ve been watching the videos, learning the call and response, and I’m just really excited,” she adds. “It’s about me being who I am, and there’s only one Freedia.” Amen to that.
Praise be to the summer of booty shorts, and get ready to welcome back the Queen of Bounce!
w/ Benni E, The Eklectiks, Shaydakiss, and DJ Cassenoire
Sat. July 7 @ Le Belmont
$10 presale / $12 door
Co-presented by I LOVE NEON + The Heart is a Pump
Big Freedia, the Queen Diva of Bounce
3 comments
[...] to grace us with an ASStounding night of p-popping hip-hop and outta control NoLa femme poetry. Big Freedia has made a several memorable trips to Montréal since her first appearance at Pop Mtl in 2010, and [...]
[...] to grace us with an ASStounding night of p-popping hip-hop and outta control NoLa femme poetry. Big Freedia has made a several memorable trips to Montréal since her first appearance at Pop Mtl in 2010, and [...]
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