Faith in an omniscient, benevolent God has always come packaged with a modicum of cognitive dissonance. If a God sees bad things and lets them happen, is it kind? If said God doesn’t, is it truly all-knowing? A similar dissonance accompanies the consideration of Big Freedia’s latest album Pressing Onward, which combines Southern gospel music with bounce, the inherently irreverent and often hypersexual flavor of uptempo hip-hop from New Orleans’ housing projects. The line between the praise chorus and clapping cheeks is anything but straight (can you twerk in a Baptist church?)—but here, Freedia finds their common ground. Both the preacher and the bounce MC use similar call-and-response techniques to command those in their audience, after all, often helping them find God in the process.
Big Freedia has spent the last 25 years making bounce and bounce-adjacent records, but like many Black artists from the South, her musical journey began in the church. As a youngster, her mother put her in the choir at Pressing Onward Baptist Church, the house of worship from which her latest album draws its name. Back then she was known as Freddie Ross Jr., and those first performances were in front of a congregation that condemned her true self. Even then, Freedia knew she wasn’t alone. “Growing up in the Black Baptist church here—in New Orleans especially—a lot of gay individuals are involved,” she told Billboard. Performing in church in crisp suits and shined shoes may not have been young Freedia’s first choice, but she wouldn’t be the first queer person moved by the salvation promised by hymns like “Amazing Grace.”
Freedia takes several approaches to the bounce-gospel synthesis on Pressing Onward. Some tracks sound like traditional contemporary gospel; others sound like Freedia simply brought bounce vocals to gospel songs or added choral harmonies and church organs to bounce tracks. And some—like the climactic penultimate track “Pew,” which borrows from funk, disco, and gospel in equal measure—sound like something else entirely. “Take My Hand” and “Let It Rain” are four-on-the-floor thumpers that feel like Freedia closed down Saturday night at Club Renaissance then strolled straight into Sunday service, co-opting the preacher’s exultations to invite us to the Queendom. “Highway to Heaven” sounds dissonant at first, with a bounce vocal style straight from the Melpomene Projects standing in stark contrast with cheerful choral harmonies. But when both parts are layered on top of each other by the end of the song, it’s so rhythmically complementary that the combination feels inevitable.
Early single “Church” is less innovative musically, cribbing much of Kirk Franklin’s recipe for “urban” gospel. But its lyrics serve as the thesis statement of Pressing Onward, and, perhaps, queer Christianity at large: “We don’t need a preacher to go to church/We don’t need a deacon to hear the word/The love that we been seeking/It’s higher than the ceiling.” It’s a message ripped straight from the actual Gospels (Matthew 18:20), and the key to understanding how faith can empower someone even as its loudest followers vilify their existence. Freedia is undeterred by the bigots; she and her community define their own relationship with God. And there’s beauty in her connection with other queer artists, including Billy Porter (featured on “Holy Shuffle”), whose journey of self-actualization also started in the church.
For an album with such an ambitious premise, it’s not the big swings that disappoint; Pressing Onward is at its weakest when it’s at its most conventional. The gentle swing and exhortations of the “Alpha and Omega” on “All I Need” are a needlessly boring detour from the songs that surround it, and “Celebration” tastes like uncut saccharine stadium pop, a surprising turn from an artist that has contributed to some of Beyoncé’s most exciting mainstream moments of the past decade.
Freedia has assembled a crack team of players serving up virtuosic performances—her guitarist Danny Abel, in particular, isn’t shy about showing off a squealing solo or two (“Revival”). But the star of any Freedia’s track is her immense vocal talent, rooted in the high-octane rhythms of bounce, with lyrics bolstered by an unflappable charisma. At its best, Pressing Onward amplifies that magic with powerful choral harmonies, carving out new space in contemporary gospel and shaping it in her own image.
