Big Freedia: Is Twerking Next to Godliness?
The Sam Sanders Show
KCRW & Sam Sanders
4.9 • 709 Ratings
🗓️ 8 August 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Big Freedia is best known as the Queen of Bounce, but her new gospel album Pressing Onward showcases her holy roots.
She tells Sam about growing up as a young gay church kid in New Orleans, what moved her to make a gospel album, and how twerking and praising God go hand in hand. Plus, Big Freedia breaks down her iconic feature on Beyoncé’s 2016 hit single “Formation.”
Pressing Onward is out now.
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The Sam Sanders Show is a production of KCRW and Sam Sanders Productions.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey listeners, it is the season of giving. Get that warm, fuzzy feeling. Make a donation, |
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| 0:20.4 | Hey, y'all, Sam Sanders here. |
| 0:22.1 | Thank you so much for checking out my show. |
| 0:24.6 | I'm going to talk about music this episode with Big Frida, the queen of New Orleans Bounce. |
| 0:29.7 | One of my favorite musical genres. |
| 0:33.0 | So, Bounce, if you don't know, it's this bright, fast, high-energy style of hip-hop that came from |
| 0:39.9 | New Orleans in the 1980s. It is all about twerking, and it sounds like this. |
| 0:49.3 | And Big Freedah's dominance of this sound is larger than life. Her gender fluid stage presence, the nonstop dancing. |
| 0:56.9 | She's basically a twerk drill sergeant, commanding her audiences to lose themselves to the beat. |
| 1:03.7 | Big Frida started off as a local sensation in New Orleans, but over the last several years, |
| 1:08.5 | she's been featured on pop songs from stars like Drake and Beyonce and Lady Gaga. |
| 1:35.0 | Big Freed is music, most of bounce music, it is sexual, raunchy, adult. |
| 1:40.7 | Which is why when I heard that Big Frida was putting out a gospel album, I was a bit surprised. |
| 1:45.8 | But then I heard the album, this mix of gospel and a bunch of other musical genres and a healthy dose of New Orleans bounce. I heard this album, and it worked. |
| 1:51.6 | Never forget what he's done for. Never ever, ever, ever forget. Uh-huh. Never ever, ever. Never did that. |
| 2:02.4 | Big Frida came by the studio this week to talk about how this whole thing came to be. |
| 2:07.6 | How her time spent as a choir director at her church when she was younger |
| 2:11.2 | influences all the music she makes now. |
| 2:14.6 | And how twerking and praising the Lord actually have a lot in common. |
| 2:20.0 | All right, I think you will love this chat. |
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