In every city where there is a sizable population of young people, there will be music unknown to the world at large. This music will be unique, influenced by what came before in that city and in the world at large with personal flourishes added into the whirls of sound to try and make real the sounds locked into the artist’s heads. These bands sound similar enough to one another but can then be cut down further. Cities and influence as genres. Washington, DC sounds like one thing while Detroit sounds like something else while Miami sounds like none of the above.

But like every white, middle class, over exposed, blogged to death scene, you have to figure that there are kids making music for themselves and their friends. Their own “folk” music.

Hip Hop isn’t the last thing black youth created but each time something else comes along or is “discovered,” it’s like a whole new revelation to the mainstream. As though Hip Hop in its myriad forms is the final word that speaks to the whole black experience.

Baltimore Club, DC Go-Go, and the music established to aid in dancing; Chicago Juke and Detroit Jit. But now (“now”) it’s Bounce from New Orleans. I say “now” because I went to go see Big Freedia at Coco 66 on Saturday, August 29th and she was already old news to most people the people in the audience. I’m not going to act like I’m some Bounce authority because my own experience is limited to a handful of YouTube videos, some short and sloppy mixes and now two live performances by the same artist. So let me give it a shot.

Bounce music is hyper sexualized Dance music built on Hip Hop where it’s less about rapping than it is about dancing. There’s call and response and hyping, an intensifying repetition that is meant to excite dancers to higher energy. Call and response is, well, “I SAY X, YOU SAY Y!” Y! “X!” “Y!” Hyping is taking a word or phrase and just repeating it or parts of it to treat the phrase like a drum pattern. SHE MAKE THE BOOTY GO POPPOPPOPPOPPOPPOPPPOP SHE MAKE THE BOOTY GO POPPOPPOPPOPPOPPOPPOPPOP. You lay that over snares so sharp they sound like your skull cracking and bass so deep and full, it’s like a gut full of bad whiskey.

Like Baltimore Club’s Doo Doo beat, Bounce has one beat that rules them all. Triggerman and Brown Beat layered together. When I first heard Bounce I thought it was lifted from MARRS, but I was mistaken. Sex, sweat, bass and hyping. That’s Bounce to me. It hits that uptempo sweet spot for me in ways that other genres couldn’t, like “Dirty South” or Hyphy where that reading on the Rap-O-Meter edged too much in the direction of the MC.

Big Freedia (pronounced “Freeda”) and cohort Rusty Lazer don’t do that. Big Freedia is Sissy Bounce, Bounce music made by gays stripped of none of the aggressive sexuality or masculinity. It’s still all about fucking at the end of the night.

Coco 66 was a near perfect venue to try and capture a bit of authenticity. It was small, it was cramped, there were mirrors everywhere and there was no air conditioning. Hot August nights. I’m going to be lazy and unclever and say, “It was like a Bayou party. Hot, wet, dark and full of predators.”

We showed up at Coco 66 in time for the open bar (which promptly lasted one drink before they “ran out”) and then waited a few hours for music to start. I didn’t catch who the DJ was but it was inoffensive house music. Nothing to tweet about. The place filled up, eventually and the first act was drafted to go on.

In all my years of seeing live acts, I have never seen one so horrible as House of Ladosha. Named in homage to Paris is Burning, they create the most horrible gay themed dance infused Hip Hop I have ever heard. I repeat, I have ever heard. “My pussy’s wetter than the Everglades.” is only the beginning of a litany of their crimes. I would love to direct you to their MySpace page so you could hear some of this for yourself but I wouldn’t want to be responsibly for ruining your day.

Let’s try to work it out. House of Ladosha is a tall gaunt white dude and his shorter than average black female cohort. What do they rap about? I’ll let their lyrics speak for them “I’m not talking about tuna / I’m not talking about fish / I’m not talking about cunt / I’m talking bout pussy.” What does it sound like? It sounds like whoever made their beats should issue a heartfelt apology to the world. Simple sequences, simple beats, simple bass. Simply horrible.

My jaw dropped from the first song and I could do nothing but stare in horror at the stage. I wouldn’t have been more shocked than if my mother had announced she had secretly been Adolf Hitler in a wig. Thankfully, their set was short.

Rusty Lazer warmed up the crowd with a combination of 1990s Hip Hop classics and Bounce music. Women and the men who lusted after them, got on stage and popped their asses and rode so close to one another it was like watching people making flour from wheat. The bread of mistake and bad ideas fueled by alcohol and youth.

Rusty had people locked into his groove as each selection was greeted with screams of recognition before everyone joined in. Rusty would cut the track and the crowd would pick up in volume filling the void. Beer, coke, grinding, booties and camera flashes popping in equal measure. My glasses fogged, the ceiling got wet and dripped our sweat back on us. The mirrors fogged, stealing back the illusion that the room was larger than it was.

The Coco 66 sound system was not up to the task. The bass would hit a wall and all the oomph would go out of it. Your brain had to transform the rigid, horrible sound of a speaker system hitting a plateau to the warm rounded sound of cones not being overtaxed.

When you moved, you inevitably danced with everyone around you, movements catching like fire, hopping from person to person until everyone in the press up front shifted and swayed in time, towards one partner, away from another. The heat was communion. You sweat on others, and in turn were sweated on.

“No one came to see you motherfuckers, get off the stage.” And then there she was. Big Freedia. Bigger than life. Fuck yo’ diva. Fuck yo’ he-va. It’s Freedia. Masculine sexuality with a veneer of femininity in style and pronoun but not action. Gay but not mainstream gay. Speaking to both a black and gay experience beyond mainstream portrayals.

On stage, she was commanding and demanding. Leading a crowd familiar with Bounce and Freedia’s lyrics. Calls were responded to without prompting. Azz Everywhere; popping, shaking free of its foundations, whites, black, judged not for the color of their skin but the content of their underpants. I have a dream.

I woefully underestimated the crowd turn out. During her show at Northside Festival, there were about 30 people at Public Assembly, but this time, Freedia and Rusty sold out the venue, after playing PS1 earlier in the day. The dancer they brought wasn’t as physically up to snuff as the one from the June show. The music was if not the same, then close enough that I couldn’t detect anything new.

The sounds were chopped and the asses were dropped. There was the usual sexual predation, uninvited grinding and a new weird “it would be good if not for all the fat chicks on stage” banter in the crowd. Good job, crowd.

Whatever. Like all mankind has known, it’s hard to feel down when you are getting down. A Freedia show crushes you. Distorts time making it go on forever and ending in the space between two heartbeats. We got outside and we caught our breath. It had to be fifteen degrees cooler out there compared to the back room of Coco 66. It didn’t matter though, we would have stayed in that swamp until we died if Big Freedia ordered us to. A willing submission to the sounds and beat.