Magazine: Shaking It to New Orleans Bounce – nytimes.com/video

New Orleans Bounce

New Orleans Bounce is a raunchy, local hip-hop style that developed in the 1990s but is only now escaping its hometown with the help of some unlikely stars. Related Article: nyti.ms

Vince Vance’s music video, I am New Orleans, is a musical collage of sights and sounds of the city released for the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Vance, who has lived in New Orleans for most of his life attempts to honor the city and showcase its beauty and its uniqueness. Read and watch more on Bayobuzz.com
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New Orleans Bounce music is an energetic style of New Orleans hip hop music which is said to have originated as early as the late 1980s, but is typically believed to have begun with the 1991 single “Where Dey At” by MC T.Tucker and DJ Irv. A highly influential cover of “Where Dey At” was also released by DJ Jimi in 1992.

New Orleans Bounce – Structure

New Orleans Bounce is characterized by call and response style party and Mardi Gras Indian chants and dance call-outs that are frequently hyper sexual.

These chants and call-outs are typically sung over the “Triggerman beat,” which is sampled from the songs “Drag Rap” by the Showboys, “Brown Beat” by Cameron Paul, and also Derek B’s “Rock The Beat”.The sound of bounce has primarily been shaped by the recycling and imitation of the “Drag Rap” sample: its opening chromatic tics, the intermittent shouting of the word “break,” the use of whistling as an instrumental element (as occurs in the bridge), the vocoded “drag rap” vocals and its brief and repetitive melody and quick beat (which were produced with use of synthesizers and drum machines and are easily sampled or reproduced using like-sounding elements).

New Orleans Bounce – Influence

The genre maintains widespread popularity in New Orleans, LA and the southern United States and has a more limited following outside of the Deep South. Throughout this decade, the Take Fo’ record label has dominated the genre with artists such as DJ Jubilee, Choppa, Baby Boy, Lady Unique, Da’ Sha Ra’ and Willie Puckett. Overtly queer “sissy bounce” or “sissy rap” performers such as Katey Red, Big Freedia and Sissy Nobby have also made significant contributions.

Like crunk, Miami bass, Baltimore club and Juke music, bounce is a highly regional form of urban dance music. Nevertheless, bounce has influenced a variety of other rap subgenres and even emerged in the mainstream. Atlanta’s crunk artists, such as Lil’ Jon and the Ying Yang Twins, frequently incorporate bounce chants into their music (such as, “shake that thing like a salt shaker”) and slang (such as, “twerk”).Mississippi native David Banner’s hit “Like A Pimp” is constructed around a screwed up sample of the “Triggerman” beat. The mixtapes of Three 6 Mafia’s DJ Paul also prominently feature traditional bounce sampling. DJ Paul, a native of Memphis, TN, has, in fact, been one of the most prominent purveyors of bounce outside of Louisiana, having incorporated its features into tracks produced for La Chat, Gangsta Boo and his own group, Three 6 Mafia. Another significant mainstream record influenced by bounce music was Beyoncé’s 2007 release “Get Me Bodied”.

Perhaps the most well known majordomo of New Orleans Bounce music has been Cash Money Records and their former in-house producer Mannie Fresh. Mannie Fresh began producing for MC Gregory D in the late 1980s, but in the early 1990s was signed to Cash Money and produced all of their albums. After Cash Money signed a national distribution deal with Universal Records in 1998, the label’s music began to reach much wider audiences. The label’s Hot Boys (Juvenile, B.G., Lil Wayne, and Turk) and Big Tymers (Mannie Fresh and Baby) released platinum albums and had several nationally charting hits using the bounce style. This was the genre’s first major mainstream exposure.

In 2010, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans featured an exhibition entitled “Where They At: New Orleans Hip-Hop and Bounce in Words and Pictures”, examining bounce’s origins, development, and influence.

New Orleans Bounce