When a 10-year-old Freddie Ross Jr. stepped into the Pressing Onward Baptist Church — a little brick building on Danneel Street in New Orleans — he was mesmerized by the spirit he felt and the celebration he witnessed among its congregants. He knew it was a safe place.
Young Freddie, known best now as Big Freedia, lived in a rough, impoverished neighborhood where crime was rampant. “It was just a safe haven for being in my community… this place was where I could go and get away from all of that,” says Big Freedia.
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But it was also a space where that child felt he could be himself.
“I was a loud and flamboyant little boy. My godmother, Georgia, who was the choir director, she just made sure that I was loved,” she says. “They opened their arms and they held me and hugged me and laughed. That’s what made it feel safe.” Georgia gave Big Freedia her first singing lessons and helped her grow into the role as the church’s choir director.
This summer she releases her first-ever gospel album, Pressing Onward, to pay homage to the church community that helped her find herself.
The timing of the record is no accident. At a time when America is as politically divided as ever and the LGBTQ+ and transgender communities are under attack, Pressing Onward is an album filled with positivity and light, about healing, when America is in desperate need of it.
“The state of where the world lives right now inspired me to want to write this album, but I also wanted to take it back to the roots where I grew up, where I started in the choir,” she says.
Pressing Onward is unabashedly jubilant, revelatory, and freeing. With songs such as “Highway to Heaven,” “Revival,” and ‘Church,” its religious themes are not subtle. But the only thing it’s proselytizing is love. Listening to it is like walking into a Black southern church on a Sunday morning and getting swept up by the choir; an almost mystic trance comes over you. It’s a record, she says, that also pays tribute to the gospel artists she grew up listening to, such as Kirk Franklin, Yolanda Adams, Ricky Dillard, Hezekiah Walker, and Milton Brunson.
Pressing Onward is Big Freedia’s third studio album, and follows her pattern of exploring different genres. Her 2014 major label debut, Just Be Free is a straight-up hip-hop record. Central City, released nine years later in 2023, is New Orleans bounce — the celebratory, hyper local upbeat hip-hop that originated in the New Orleans housing projects and earned her the “Queen of Bounce” moniker. She has also released a live album, Live at the Orpheum Theatre (2024) and five EPs: A Very Big Freedia Christmazz (2016), 3rd Ward Bounce (2018), Louder (2020), Big Freedia’s Smokin Santa Christmas (2020), and Big Diva Energy (2021).
The new album is a message of hope for her listeners but also a reminder to herself to keep hope alive, even in the darkest times.
“I’ve had so many different things happened in my life,” she says. “I’ve lost so many people in my life. I’ve lost my mother and my father both to cancer. I’ve lost lots of different relatives, friends, and family that’s in the neighborhood. And so just over the years there have been a lot of dark roads and I just needed a path of life for myself as well. And I know that the world needs it as much as I do.
“I just want to bring happiness and joy to the world. I want people to know that there’s still hope.”
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