Strange Fruit 241: In Search Of Big Freedia

She's featured on Beyoncé's "Formation" and in Drake's song "Nice for What." You've heard her voice and most definitely heard her influence. But there's a good chance you don't know what Big Freedia looks like. Popular (and mainstream) artists like Bey and Drake are quick to use Big Freedia on their songs, but never feature the Queen of Bounce in their videos. "You know, my voice be on a lot of different stuff and people want to use bounce music as a part of their music, but when it comes to the proper recognition of me being in the video, that's something that we're steady working towards to make it happen," Freedia said in an interview with Fader in April. Myles Johnson (Janelle Monáe recently called him "one of the greatest writers of this generation," no big deal) recently wrote about it in an essay called "The Ghost of Big Freedia." He joins us this week to talk about the erasure of Big Freedia and the history of pop music taking from more marginalized artists without proper credit.