Big Freedia is known as the Queen of Bounce, but her latest album provided an opportunity to try something completely different: gospel.
“If you didn’t know, the Queen of Bounce started in gospel. I come from the church, and it has been on my heart to do a gospel album for a while now,” the rapper, 47, exclusively told Us Weekly while discussing Pressing Onward, which drops Friday, August 8. “And I think right now it’s just very important because it’s something that the world needs. We need a little bit of joy with all this crazy stuff that’s happening around the world.”
Freedia, whose live performances are known for their copious twerking sessions, first got the idea to get “back to [her] roots” during a songwriting camp she attended about two years ago. One song in particular, a gospel-flavored dance number called “Celebration,” stuck out to her, and she ultimately decided to center her next project around the gospel genre.
“I’ve been in the music game now for 25 years,” the New Orleans native explained to Us. “Why not go into the gospel genre? I’ve been in every other genre of music. Why not give God the glory as well?”
Despite prevailing stereotypes, Freedia is part of the estimated 5.3 million LGBTQIA+ individuals who identify as religious. While many organized religions don’t have a stellar track record when it comes to accepting people who live and love outside a traditional, heterosexual box Freedia considers the church to be a place of acceptance.
“Here in New Orleans, you have so many gay people in the church,” she told Us. “You have the organist that’s gay, the choir director, lots of choir members in the church … we accept everybody and we love everybody here in New Orleans. And so my city embraces it, and that’s where my love for God is so strong, because it allows us here to open the door for everybody. Come as you are, and God loves us all no matter who we are, no matter what walk of life we are in. And no matter who we love, he loves us all.”
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That inclusive message is something many lapsed churchgoers arguably hoped to hear on any given Sunday — and thankfully, it’s all over Pressing Onward. The song “Church,” for example, begins with the lines, “We don’t need a preacher to go to church / We don’t need a deacon to hear the word / The love that we’ve been seeking is higher than a ceiling.”
For Freedia, the lyrics have an explicitly religious meaning, but that doesn’t mean secular fans won’t find enjoyment here as well. “Church” could as easily be about finding peace within a chosen family, as it is about the literal act of worshipping together. Other tracks, like“Holy Shuffle,” featuring Billy Porter, are just straight-up bangers.
While Freedia has always been religious, her faith — and the meaning of Pressing Onward — faced a major test this year when her partner of 20 years, Devon Hurst, died from complications caused by diabetes. It could have been the kind of earth-shattering event that caused her to question her beliefs, but she says it in fact strengthened her faith and made her realize how important it was for her to complete Pressing Onward.
“I have to keep bringing joy to the world, and [Devon] would want me to be happy and to be still pressing forward through these adversities, through losing him,” said Freedia. “It just hit home even harder because now that’s exactly what I have to do. Keep pressing onward. And I’m only doing it through God. You know, sometimes I’ll be like, ‘How am I even still here? How am I even making it through this, losing somebody I’ve been with for 20 years?’ And only God knows and only God can get me through this.”
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While Hurst isn’t here to witness the release of Pressing Onward, Freedia noted he heard the whole album before his death — and he loved it.
“He got to be here with me while I was making it, every step of the way,” she recalled. “We would talk about it, and he was so excited for me to just be bringing this to the world, because he knew we all gotta get our house in order.”
The end result is a project that’s bursting with joy, even as its creator was facing the hardest moment of her life. Freedia hopes her fans catch some of that joy when they listen, which is what gospel is all about in the first place.
“It is the hand claps, the tambourines, the choir,” Freedia explained, recalling her own experience singing gospel music as a kid. “That brought me so much joy in my childhood growing up, going to choir rehearsal and to Sunday school and Friday night musicals and other churches to sing with my choir. And being a choir director at my high school, singing with the New Orleans Gospel Soul Children, going to the big gospel conventions — it brought me the most joy in my life.”
Pressing Onward is out Friday, August 8.
