Big Freedia: My personality drew all these people to me

Yeah, there's many ways that we have talked about it. I've been able to grow and expand what I've been doing over the years. I can't change the past in what I've already recorded for music, and I wouldn't want to. So the older songs that I can clear in the way of samples is fine and dandy. But in the future, I will be doing much more original stuff while still trying to stay within bounce parameters. That way the music will actually be mine.

Yes, indeed, because I get to see a lot more of my money [laughs]. It's more fun than ever. I can control it from all aspects, and now I can hire those who I want to oversee each track. It's nice to have more authority, and I didn't have as much with the samples. 

My personality drew all these people to me. God put them in my pathway for a reason, and my personality drew them to me without any money involved. Just my personality alone got them here. All of these people wanted to help me grow and help me get to another level. Now everybody's getting paid, because Freedia's doing bigger and better things. We're just trying to keep moving forward and keeping having everything shoot for the stars. 

There are nights where I feel down sometimes. It gets to be very tiresome always using that kind of energy. But my energy comes from my fans. No doubt about it. When I see people and how excited they are that I'm there and going off in the club, that gives me energy. It flips a switch inside me and says, "Hey, even if you're tired, you better get your ass up there and do you you gotta do for your fans." You can drop dead after the show is over. That's my attitude  Each night. Each show. 365 days a year. That's just Freedia. I'm a workaholic.

I like to shock them. I typically tend to weigh out crowds. But even at a place like MoMA, they want it. And they want me to release it. When I get that feeling I just have to let loose. Because that's why they brought me. They want to let loose at this moment. They're tired of being stuffed up. They're tired of being cute and conservative. They wanna let their hair down. They want to shake their ass for a moment, and that's why they brought Freedia. 

I'm so happy that when I started performing bounce music it was original and that it was something that stood out from every other artist. When I started to take this seriously and decided that this was going to become my craft, I had to get my circle around me where I could stand out from the rest. That allowed me to make something of New Orleans and something that would continue to represent my culture and where this music started.