Sad but true: not only are we reviewing more Drake than Big Freedia, he’s even outscoring her…
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Katherine St Asaph: KATHERINEKATHERINEKATHERINEKATHERINE* RELEASE YOUR JOB, RELEASE THE TIME, RELEASE YOUR TRADE, RELEASE THE STRESS. Just found my new 5 p.m. Monday on the Internet music, folks. *(that wasn’t the actual lyric, but it is now!)
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Crystal Leww: March forward to the commands of the Queen Diva. Big Freedia does a lot of the same, but honestly if you put like twenty of these songs on a mixtape for me, I would listen to the whole damn thing.
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Anthony Easton: Big Freedia can release anything she wants, up to but not limited to any krakens she might have, because I believe her when she tells me it will be all right.
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Alfred Soto: The best thing I can write: someone should sample the stentorian “LET’S GO!”
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Thomas Inskeep: I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around the “popularity” of sissy bounce. What I hear is a a big black queen shouting at me, repetitively, over and over, like a hammer to the head, with an empty Casio drum-machine beat going in the background. I think there’s a very specific reason that bounce is a regional phenom — it doesn’t translate to non-native speakers.
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Jonathan Bradley: Big Freedia songs are best gauged by the efficiency through which they transmogrify chanting into club-wide ass-shaking, and by that standard, “Explode” is the moment in her set where you might start wondering how long until its time for “Gin in My System” or “Azz Everywhere.” “Release your wiggle” is a call designed to be liberatory but is in practice passive, and the blue-collar salve of “I’ve been working all day, I’ve been working all night … release your job” is more fun to theorize about than dance to.
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Mallory O’Donnell: “Release your wiggle” is possibly the best invitation to dance ever, but the punishing CD-skip jack track “Explode” invites you to dance to is not for the faint of heart. It is what you would call a non-groove. NOW GET DOWN.
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Brad Shoup: There’s nothing here as compelling as Freedia’s howl — certainly not those sub-Beastie Boys expressions of empathy — even as it steals inertia from the track. The bounce should be its own reward.
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Imagine a heist movie where Freedia has to yell her demands down a walker at some point. How great a scene would that be? Let’s call the movie Sissy Heat. Oh, and this could be on the soundtrack I guess, and we could get the rights to head straight into the “Triggerman” drop instead of teasing everyone. SISSY HEAT: SUMMER 2015!
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