I’m from a small town on the bottom edge of Mississippi, very near New Orleans and the Louisiana border. My family has lived there for generations.
To get to New Orleans you don’t pass through anywhere else. That geographical location, being aloof, lets it hold onto the ritual of its own pace more than other places that have to keep up with the progress.
I’ve been all over the world. I love New York, I love Paris, San Francisco, so many places. But there’s no place like New Orleans. It’s got the best food. It’s got the best music. It’s got the best people. It’s got the most fun stuff to do.
I have a love / hate relationship with the city of New Orleans, which is the strongest kind of relationship.
I’d love to live in New Orleans. I love the freedom of it – for good and for bad.
Eighty-five percent of us in this country, by the way, live in coastal areas, so again, Katrina and Rita were not just about New Orleans. There were a lot of lessons that the nation can learn from us if they just pay attention to the things that are going on down here.
New Orleans invented the brown paper bag party – usually at a gathering in a home – where anyone darker than the bag attached to the door was denied entrance. The brown bag criterion survives as a metaphor for how the black cultural elite quite literally establishes caste along color lines within black life.
I needed New Orleans so badly back in 2006, just somebody to believe in me, somebody to care about me.
New Orleans is just a microcosm of Newark and Detroit and hundreds of other troubled urban locales.
Werner Herzog, when I auditioned for ‘Bad Lieutenant,’ he had never seen any of my films. He thought I was this actress living in New Orleans and it was my first job.
The city of New Orleans showed America what it takes to rebuild a great place. We’re all going together, and we’re not leaving anybody behind.
Growing up, my parents were Roman Catholic – strict Catholics – from New Orleans. I understood the idea in the principle of spirituality. I noticed it in the stories that I read. The Trinity was something that was brought up consistently: the power of three. Things happened in threes, and I thought that was brilliant.
Essence is something I always enjoy, because I love New Orleans. Since they brought it back to New Orleans, it’s a special place to me. We been doing it since the beginning. We did it when it was in Houston, but there’s nothing like New Orleans.
I love what I’m seeing out there with Pro Wrestling Syndicate, Northeast Wrestling, Big Time Wrestling, and WildKat in New Orleans. There is a lot of good stuff out there.
New Orleans is my kind of city. I think there’s a lot going on, but it’s also very calm. It’s a place where I can actually drive a car without being stuck in traffic for for 40, 50 minutes. It’s my kind of city. A lot going on but still calm.
It’s important to recognize how special New Orleans is. You play the snare drum or the clarinet in any other city, and you’d be considered a nerd, but here, there’s no shame in it, and it’s absolutely valued.
My dad always pointed out Louis Armstrong’s pad when we passed by there. And me and my dad were both proud Louis Armstrong was from New Orleans.
I actually went to the first game in Saints history. We were living in New Orleans at the time. I was eight. They opened against the L.A. Rams in 1976. I went with my dad, and we bought standing-room only seats at Tulane Stadium. We actually sat in the aisle.
New Orleans is like my blood; it’s not going anywhere. And then I just take different things that I’ve learned over the years and add them to what I’m doing with the natural New Orleans sound.
In America, I would say New York and New Orleans are the two most interesting food towns. In New Orleans, they don’t have a bad deli. There’s no mediocrity accepted.
I was a very poor young black boy in New Orleans, just a face without a name, swimming in a sea of poverty trying to survive.
Basically, from the pilot of the first season of ‘Togetherness,’ I was strategically losing weight all the way through and then all the way into Season Two. So luckily, I had the plan, and I had a lot of time to do it. But it’s definitely not easy, because I’m from New Orleans and I love to eat.
I’m all into Jazz; I’m into New Orleans type music. There is country, there is southern gospel. I’m a huge southern gospel fan.
Half of my family has a deep-rooted connection to the South and Louisiana, and for me, New Orleans is one of our most precious, historic communities: visually, emotionally, artistically.
