KATEY RED

Katey Red is a Bounce artist, rapper, and entertainer from New Orleans, Louisiana. Over the last two decades, she’s been responsible for some of the most relentless, high energy, and unafraid club music ever heard. Working at the frontier of Bounce music – the fiercely local New Orleans genre of party music – Katey led a new generation of artists who pushed the rhythmic complexity and narrative possibilities of the style. Perhaps the most arresting of Katey Red’s acts was her decision to perform as an out, gay and transgender woman from the start of her career. In 1999, when her first CD was released, the possibility of a gay rapper was unfathomable, and the effect was both profound and immediate. “When Katey came on the scene so flamboyant and full-blown,” recalled rapper Sissy Nobby of his own beginnings, “I’m like, ‘Hell I can do this! I’ma just come out too!’” Katey opened the doors for a host of gay Bounce artists including Big Freedia, Vockah Redu, and Nicky da B.

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