I like to make everything and I can really cook.
— Big Freedia
I came out at a very early age. I sat my mom down at my 12th birthday party and told her in front of my friends. She said, 'Baby, mama already knows, and I'm going to love you regardless.' Once I got my mom's support, there was nothing else I needed.
The first 10 years of my journey, I was still figuring out who I was, and then I had to redo it all over again when I became bigger. So instead of saying, 'I'm gay and this is me,' I started telling the story through my music.
I'm always working and coming up with new and fresh ideas to keep my fans engaged and keep myself relevant.
I'm steady trying to make this bounce stuff mainstream and do some wonderful and great things for the culture of New Orleans.
Everything has a feeling to it, even if it's not your type of music - it has a feeling for somebody in the world.
Like a lot of artists, I started out as a singer in my church choir when I was a child.
I come from a community plagued with so much poverty and violence and homophobia.
I started travelling doing shows everywhere to make people feel like a sense of New Orleans wherever they may be.
About 1998, my best friend, Katey Red, was the first transsexual male to come out with bounce music. And I background Katey for about two years. And then that's when the game totally switched when me and Katey jumped in it.
I'm a bounce artist, straight born and raised from New Orleans, Louisiana, and I love what I do.
Some issues just need to be dealt with - that we're still dealing with in the world, with police brutality and racism.
Duffy is go hard or go home. It's just a concept that I wanted to have when we're doing different things. When me and my dancers go in, we usually go hard or we go home. We're not here to play. We go duffy.
Bounce music is uptempo, heavy bass, call and response.
Me and Drake and all his people hung out. I had the whole club jumping.
I've always liked to dance.
I'd love to work with Snoop Dogg, Skrillex, Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar.
I've grown in tremendous ways with enhancing my music, my ability to perform on stage and travel all around to spread bounce music. I've come so far from being that little black boy growing up in New Orleans to now.
I get DMs all the time: kids who don't know how to come out to their parents, parents who don't know how to deal with their kids who are gay. I try to give the best advice I can.
The bigger artists are definitely looking and paying attention to the culture and the style of bounce music.
It has to do a lot more than just twerking. It's feel good music; it makes people have a good time. It doesn't matter what type of situation they're in, we bounce all around New Orleans. Weddings, birthday parties, funerals. The whole nine yards, and it's a happy music, it turns people from a frown to a happy smile.
For a long time a lot of people thought New Orleans wasn't a safe place and that it was very ratchet.
Of course, Bounce is all about the dance moves.
I've been dying to do something with Ms. Patti LaBelle because she is so iconic. I grew up listening to her with my mom in the house. She is such a big inspiration to me.
I create music for myself first of all because if I'm not happy with the music I create, I can't make anybody else happy.
I come from the city of New Orleans where it's live and vibrant.
Everyone has a butt. No matter what size it is, you can work it.
Beyonce has a platform; what's a better way to speak on your platform than through your music?
You know, being the artist and not knowing when you sometimes create a song, you don't think about whether it's gonna start controversy or whatever. Sometimes you just write and you're in the zone.
Twerking is definitely from New Orleans.
If I'm just trying to get to different levels... and it takes levels to get to levels, and I just have to do what I have to do to keep on climbing the charts and getting where I need to be.
I still feel like there are so many things that I have to do to really become an icon. I've done a lot and laid down a lot of groundwork, but there's so much more work to be done. There's a lot more that I want to do, LGBTQ centers that I want to open. After I leave my legacy, then I will be that icon.
I'm an artist who happens to be gay.
Bounce is a primarily call-and-response style of hip-hop over a 'Trigger Man' beat. It's a New Orleans-created hip-hop style that developed in the late '80s, early '90s.
Freedom to me can be so many things; freedom to be myself, to express myself and do the things I want to do, freedom to go in any direction I want to go in order to accomplish my goals.
I can't pull back. I'm 6 foot 3, I'm tall, and I'm gay. I light up the room.
I mean you have to work hard to earn respect and make people respect you. When I come to the presence of any room or any place, people give me the most high respects and I'm gracious and appreciative of that.
I was young so when I had that job at Burger King, I was still in high school and I just needed to help out my mom. And help myself because I needed to buy some of my clothes. I did that for about three years and I had became a shift manager working at Burger King, doing my thing. I was young and excited to make my own money.
I was a choir director for my high school. Of my friends, I was the more rational one, because I was the choir girl!
I draw my strength from my mom, who passed away a few years ago. She taught me from the day I was just a little boy to never give up and be proud of who I am.
I would love to do something with many artists, you know: Fantasia, Cardi B, Lil Wayne, J.Lo, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson. There's so many of them! All of them are iconic in their own way and to collaborate with any of those artists of that magnitude would be such an honor for me because I grew up listening to them and I love their music.
The journey after Katrina, it opened a lot of doors for a lot of people. Coming from a rooftop to going to Hollywood and around the world, internationally teaching people about bounce music, definitely God is good and amazing about what he can do with your life.
No one can predict what God is going to do.
Everyone is unique to the way that they dance in New Orleans.
I'm a beast in the kitchen.
I'm comfortable with who I am.
There's no such thing as 'sissy bounce.' We don't separate it here in New Orleans at all. It's just bounce music. Just because I'm a gay artist, they don't have to put it in a category or label it.
I've worked tremendously hard to make things happen for New Orleans culture.
Once I started rapping, I had to start dancing more. I had to really use my craft, and take everything I did for fun and put it into my professional shows.
Outside of Bounce, I listen to Beyonce, Sia, Rihanna.
