Katey Red: Bounce Music's First Queen

The Spy Who Loved New Orleans

James Pitot was born in France in 1761, became a successful merchant in Spanish colonial New Orleans, and served as the second mayor of the city after the Louisiana Purchase. His story would be interesting enough on those facts alone. But what makes Pitot truly fascinating is that he represents the class of European-born entrepreneurs who shaped New Orleans during its most formative decades — the men who navigated French, Spanish, and American governments while building the commercial infrastructure that made the city rich.

Actually, let's talk about someone more interesting. Let's talk about Katey Red.

In the late 1990s, a teenager from the Melpomene Projects named Kenyon Carter started performing bounce music under the name Katey Red. In doing so, she became the first openly transgender bounce artist in New Orleans — and one of the first openly trans hip-hop artists anywhere.

Bounce music, for all its revolutionary energy, was an aggressively masculine scene. The block parties, the clubs, the culture around it — all of it was rooted in the hypermasculine world of New Orleans housing projects. Katey Red walked into that world, declared herself, and made music that was so undeniably good that the scene had to make room for her.

Her debut album, Melpomene Block Party, dropped in 1999 on Take Fo' Records. It was raw, it was fun, and it proved that bounce music's spirit of liberation extended further than most people thought. Katey Red opened the door for other LGBTQ+ bounce artists, including Big Freedia, who would later take bounce to a global audience.

Before Big Freedia was a household name, before bounce music's queer identity was recognized nationally, Katey Red was doing it in the Melpomene Projects with nothing but a microphone and the refusal to be anything other than who she was. In a city that celebrates authenticity, Katey Red is one of the most authentic figures New Orleans has ever produced.