What is bounce music? It’s a rapid-fire style of New Orleans call-and-response club rap that has received a lot of media attention lately thanks to ‘sissy bounce’, the handful of gay and trans rappers who are among the scene’s most popular performers. Later this week we’ll post an interview with Big Freedia, the queen diva of bounce and one of the hardest working emcees in the game. Big Freedia performs six nights a week in New Orleans and regularly tours around North America. Over the next two weeks she’ll bring her raunchy rhymes and ample-bottomed back-up dancers to Brooklyn, Toronto, Montreal and New Orleans’ Gay Pride.
For more on bounce music, check out the excellent website “Where They At”, an oral history of bounce music curated by photographer Aubrey Edwards and writer Alison Fensterstock for the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. The site features music and audio interviews with veteran bounce acts such as Mia X, Cheeky Blakk and DJ Jubilee, and sissy bounce performers Katey Red, Vockah Redu and of course, Big Freedia.
Below are two bounce mixes by DJ Rusty Lazer. Tracklisting for the “Sweetheart’s Ball Bounce Mix” after the jump.
(Photo by Aubrey Edwards)