After Losing Her Partner of Two Decades, Big Freedia Says Her Gospel Album ‘Means More Than Ever Now’

At first blush, the mere idea of a Big Freedia gospel album sounds like musical Mad Libs. After all, Freedia is the queen of New Orleans bounce music, an ass-shaking, party-starting hip-hop dynamo; save for Sodom and Gomorrah, there’s not a ton of booty popping in the Bible.

But like many LGBTQ+ Black artists raised in the American South, Freedia’s musical awakening was far more parochial. “Growing up in the Black Baptist church here — in New Orleans especially — a lot of gay individuals are involved,” the 47-year-old tells Billboard from her colorfully festooned New Orleans home, where she’s hunkered down as a rainstorm approaches. “I started singing when I was a little kid. I was the choir director at my high school. I’m taking it back to my roots.” She pauses for a half beat. “It’s been on my heart heavy to do a gospel project. We’re living in some crazy times.”

After some 15 years as bounce music’s standard-bearer — during which she starred in her own reality series (Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce on the cable channel Fuse from 2013 to 2017) and collaborated with artists from Beyoncé (“Formation”) to Kesha (“Raising Hell”) to Drake (“Nice for What”) — Freedia set out to craft songs to liberate not merely the hips, but the spirit, too. She conceived her new project, Pressing Onward, to show the world “a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel.”

Just 10 days after our conversation, Freedia’s partner of two decades, Devon Hurst, died at the age of 38 of complications from diabetes. Now this album of songs about faith, resilience and hope for a better hereafter has taken on an even deeper personal meaning.

“Losing my partner, Devon, so suddenly changed everything,” Freedia reflects. “This album started as a message of healing for the world — but now, it’s me who’s holding on to the music for strength. I’m pouring my heart into every beat, every word, and leaning on the love of my family, friends and fans to keep me moving forward. Pressing Onward means more than ever now.”

Due Aug. 8, Pressing Onward is named after the New Orleans Baptist church Freedia was raised in. The 14 tracks include guest spots by Billy Porter (“Holy Shuffle”) and Tamar Braxton (“Sunday Best”), both of whom also grew up in the church, with Freedia’s “handpicked” choir of local gospel singers, led by Josh Kagler, elevating each song. “Me and him sung when we were younger together,” Freedia says with a wistful smile of Kagler. “We definitely go way back.” In those days, Sundays meant a young Freddie Ross Jr. (Freedia’s birth name) wearing suits, polished shoes and pressed slacks. “We’ll be fresh,” she says with a smile — though nowadays, Freedia doesn’t need the excuse of the sabbath to gussy up: “I’m always fabulous whenever I step out.”

Similarly, Freedia’s concept of faith has evolved and expanded beyond church walls. That’s central to Pressing Onward’s second track, “Church,” and its defiant refrain: “We don’t need a preacher to go to church… the love that we’ve been seeking is higher than the ceiling.”

Given the fraught relationship between the LGBTQ+ community and most Christian denominations, the sentiment will likely resonate with many. “Church is in the heart,” Freedia reasons. “You can have a relationship with your higher being and don’t have to go to a building they call a church. The people make up the church, not the building.”

On Pressing Onward, Freedia is creating her own religious experience of sorts — one that marries the powerful peaks and sonorous valleys of gospel with the irrepressible, relentless energy of bounce. A Big Freedia concert isn’t so different from a Baptist service: Putting aside lyrical content and clothes (or lack thereof), both are centered on a charismatic figure whose call-and-response pushes an audience toward communal catharsis.

“It was a different headspace, definitely, but it was an easy switch for me,” Freedia says of writing songs about faith and God. One may not expect that from a performer who spearheaded setting the Guinness World Record for “most people twerking simultaneously” (406 in New Orleans, 2014), but Freedia has remained passionate about Christian music throughout her life. “When I’m having a bad day or when I just want to lift my spirit, I listen to gospel music. And I’m always listening to gospel music when we’re on the tour bus,” she says, rattling off some of her favorite singers — Milton Brunson, Kirk Franklin, John P. Kee, Yolanda Adams, Shirley Caesar, Ricky Dillard — with a rapidity and ease that could convince any doubting ­Thomas that her love for the genre is genuine and deeply rooted.

This isn’t the first time that gospel has helped Freedia cope with tragedy. In 2018, her brother, Adam Ross, was shot and killed in New Orleans at the age of 35. And as viewers of Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce know, her ­mother, Vera Ross, died in 2014; in the second season, Freedia led a second line funeral parade for her through the streets of the city. She knows her mother would have been “super proud” of her gospel pivot. “She’s looking down and smiling down on me,” Freedia says with an affirming nod. “She would have been overwhelmed and very excited for this project because she started me in the choir. Just to come back full circle… This, to me, feels like my best project yet.”

It isn’t, however, the only one she’s working on. As chronicled in her current reality series, Big Freedia Means Business (also on Fuse), Freedia has been working to open a boutique hotel near the live music-heavy Frenchmen Street in NOLA, boasting “handpicked recipes from the queen herself” of soul food and local culinary classics. “It will be open next year sometime,” she promises of the aptly named Hotel Freedia. “It’s going to be a bang once it does open.”

In the meantime, she’s relying on music — her own and the gospel she’s grown up with — to provide solace during this unexpectedly painful time in her personal life. “My music is my outlet to be able to express myself, to be able to express what I’m going through,” Freedia says. “I’m always pressing forward. Through all the adversities I face, through all the life issues, I’m always pressing forward.”

This story appears in the June 21, 2025, issue of Billboard.