Big Freedia

Big Freedia
16" x 12", oil on canvas paper, 2014

It doesn't happen often, but every once in a blue moon you'll find a mainstream pop hit you'd consider the greatest thing ever, even if only for a brief time. That happened to me when I chanced upon the hit Y'all Get Back Now by Big Freedia. On the YouTube video of the song I saw and heard three minutes of nonconformist raw hip-hop energy like I had never seen before. The genre, a sub-genre of hip-hop, is apparently called 'bounce', Freedia's variety awkwardly dubbed 'sissy-rap', is closely associated with the current phenomenon of twerking (twisting and jerking). Twerking is a vernacular term only recently added to the dictionaries. It originated in New Orleans, just like Big Freedia Queen Diva (as he, Freddie Ross, calls himself), and the bounce genre do. Big Freedia was there from the beginning (early nineties) and is in fact credited with popularizing the genre.