Big Freedia: 2025

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

Big Freedia is a legend in all ways and has the affectionate sobriquets to prove it: the Queen Diva, Queen of Bounce, and Queen of New Orleans. In addition to her musical path, she's an activist, author, television personality and businessperson. Her prior music has always been the jubilant soundtrack to any raucous party, but with her latest album, Pressing Onward, Big Freedia takes a heartfelt bounce into gospel, music she's loved since childhood.

Pressing Onward is a soaring, spiritual testament to queerness, the Black Baptist church, acceptance, and inclusion. It's also a compelling, fresh direction for Big Freedia, who truly hopes to heal discord and misunderstanding through music, community, and positivity. 

Despite the jubilant roots of Pressing Onward, the album's release has paralleled a difficult personal time for Big Freedia. This FUV Live session took place just a couple of months after the death of her longtime partner, Devon Hurst, in May. Big Freedia's decision to push forward to promote the record is core to her professionalism and the loving message of Pressing Onward — named after a beloved New Orleans place of worship. Big Freedia's Southern spiritual sensibility, forged as a child in church choir, is her ballast, as she discussed in my interview with her.

Listen our conversation, which also touched on childhood, grief and why this album, dedicated to Devon, means the world to Big Freedia. In addition, hear live performances of "Take My Hand" and "Church."

"Church is having connection with God," she says. "Wherever we are, we give God the grace and the glory."

[Recorded 7/9/25. Produced by Jim O'Hara with Erin Merriman, Holden Buckley, and Thomas Lapus. Produced by Meghan Suma. Videographers: Olivia Iannaccone, Adithi Vimalanathan, Bella Lipayon and Mia Vilke.]