Despite its responsibility for bringing twerking into the national spotlight and infiltrating other regional rap genres with its high-energy call and response style, New Orleans’s Bounce music has yet to receive its due as a whole. It has had a few unfortunate surges of national popularity lately like when Drake sampled HaSizzle’s “She Rode That Dick Like A Soldier” on Views or when Miley Cyrus gave a half assed attempt at twerking on Robin Thicke at the VMA’s. But the list of artists that have been inspired by/contributed to this infectious and repetitive genre is impressive and immense, including names like Lil Wayne, Juvenile, Big Freedia, Three 6 Mafia, Master P, and Ying Yang Twins.
Gaining traction in the early 90’s, the genre is defined by a bicoastal combination of the hypnotic one-bar drum loop from NYC duo The Showboy’s track “Drag Rap” and San Francisco DJ Cameron Paul’s instrumental “Brown Beats.” Two of the first people to capitalize on this recipe were Mannie Fresh (who insists that he was one of the first street DJ’s to use these two samples together) and T Tucker + DJ Irv who recorded what is arguably the first Bounce track titled “Where Dey At.” The vocalists would often shout out various neighborhoods or “wards” in New Orleans on their songs which, coupled with the fact that this music is insanely fun to dance to, helped the music spread through local block parties. At the time, it was common for a producer to either get labeled as a bounce producer or a hip hop producer, but Mannie Fresh assimilated those two roles into one on Cash Money and is one of the main reasons why the genre was able to be heard outside of New Orleans in the first place. Though the building blocks of the genre are straight forward, a large swath of talented rappers, singers, DJ’s, and producers, have prevented any sort of shortage of this frantic booty-shaking music over the past 30 years.
I first got into Bounce when I was assigned the task of transcribing a slew of interviews with New Orleans DJ’s for an internship I took after college. Having already been a Lil Wayne + Cash Money fan for quite a few years at that point, it was intriguing to listen to Mannie Fresh talk about being a pioneer in Bounce and how that went on to influence his work as a producer for various Cash Money artists. From one listen of his creation “Buck Jump Time” with Gregory D under the name of Project Rapp, the connection between Bounce and the Second Line marching bands featured in Mardi Gras parades is plain as day. This playlist is a smattering of Bounce old and new, beginning with the bare bones and then moving into some of my favorite tracks over the genre’s timeline.