Ozone Magazine

This interview will appear in Ozone’s upcoming Sex Issue

Freaknik Resurected
Adult Swim is Bringing Freaknik Back…but is it welcome?
By Maurice G. Garland

Even though Freaknik has been retired for a decade, the mere mention of its name still draws a bevy of emotions. Whisper the word around the city of Atlanta and you get a spectrum of responses ranging from “ah man, good times” to “oh lord, good riddance.” What stared off as a small gathering amongst Atlanta University Center students in 1982, grew into a city wide party that became both legendary and notorious.

Very similar to the Spring Break celebrations in Miami, Cancun and Daytona Beach that often made it to MTV, Freaknik was the Black version where students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities convened on Atlanta for a weekend of partying. Unlike the other celebrations though, Freaknik did not take place on beach, but rather in the confines of a major city. Gridlocked traffic was a common occurrence as party seekers often made a party out of the situation, making many other Atlantans late for work, weddings and even emergency hospital visits.

While traffic was a tolerable nuisance, Freaknik’s reputation for lewd and sometimes violent behavior was not. Reports of rapes and robberies often times overshadowed the benefit concerts, celebrity basketball games and even job fairs that were also associated with the weekend celebration. Couple this with the fact that the thought of 250,000 Black people being in one place at one time can look threatening to some, the City of Atlanta acted swiftly to start thwarting the party.
City officials blocked off streets, boosted police presence and littered the streets with tickets the same way that patrons did with empty food and drink containers. From 1992 to 1997 Freaknik became a thing of folklore that had popular rappers not only name dropping it, but making plans months in advance to attend. But by 1998, the party was strangled to death and eventually disappeared completely by 2000.

Party promoters have attempted numerous times to resuscitate the festival, but none have succeeded. However, Cartoon Network’s late night programming block Adult Swim has found a way to bring Freaknik back, as a ghost.

Last night Freaknik: The Musical debuted on Adult Swim with T-Pain voicing the part of Freaknik. A ghost with skin made out of dollar signs who wears an outrageous gold chain with a charm that is a likeness of himself. Surprisingly, this probably isn’t the most outrageous element of the cartoon.

The show will revolve around a four-man rap group that goes by the name Sweet Tea Mobsters. They hail from fictional Sweet Tea, Florida and are on a mission to get to the Freaknik celebration in Atlanta so that they can participate in the Battle of Trillest (think Battle of the Bands for rappers) where the grand prize winner will receive a lifetime supply of money, clothes and hoes.

By now, you’ve probably already formed an opinion about Freaknik: A Musical. Which is fine, that’s what the show creators want you to do, on top of have a good time watching it. Ozone caught up with the shows co-creators, co-writers and co-executive producers of the show Nick Weidenfeld (Head of Development at Adult Swim) and Carl Jones (co-executive producer of The Boondocks) to have them explain the cartoon’s origins and intentions.

Start off by telling us where this idea originated from.

Nick: We actually started off working on another cartoon that was more about race and politics and a Return of Freaknik episode was just going to be one of them. It was about a character that embodied spring break and the personification of the best party in the world. Who better than T-Pain to be the voice of the party? As I started to work on that idea, we went away from politics and went to fun. I started working more with Pain and he got more involved in the show. From there I started working with Carl Jones from The Boondocks and decided to create a show around the Freaknik character.

I loved the idea of A Charlie Brown Christmas special and thought it would be funny to have a spring break special. So it’s a road trip about a group of rappers growing up in a town called Sweet Tea, Florida called the Sweet Tea Mobsters. Rick Ross, Cee-Lo, DJ Pooh and T-Pain’s artist Young Cash are the voices. They are a group of struggling rappers that want to get put on. They are hustling hard and they are holding a Battle of the Bands that’s called the Battle of the Trillest and the winner gets a lifetime supply of money, clothes and hoes. They are desperately trying to get from Florida to Atlanta. Along the way they run out of gas and wind up at a white frat party. Then they end up in the trap where they meet Trap Jesus who is played by Lil Wayne. The story is about their struggles to get there and the people they meet who both help and distract them. Tha Bizness produced the music so its real funny and it has some bangers.

Carl: To clear up confusion, a rumor leaked out saying that Lil Wayne is playing Jesus, that’s not true. The character he is playing is like Jesus. We actually went through several name changes. He’s not the Jesus from the Bible, but he represents a Christ-like figure because he has a flock of dudes that always following him, but he runs a trap house. In their journey the Sweet Tea Mobsters wind up on the wrong side of the tracks in a bad neighborhood and Trap Jesus give them…useful tools for their journey.

What went into selecting the artists that are doing the voice work on the cartoon?

Nick: When I met T-Pain he was the biggest fan of Adult Swim. Its on his rider that he has to have Cartoon Network. Big Boi had to be apart of it, George Clinton and Bootsy had to be apart of this. Rick Ross has good relationship with Pain and he has great voice for cartoons. Cee-Lo and Lil Jon, we wanted to get as many dudes from Atlanta as possible. We wanted people who made it authentic and with a sense of humor.

With some of the potentially offensive elements you’ve named in the cartoon, it would take person with a special sense of humor to take part in this.

Nick: We picked people who wanted people to have fun. There are people who had real fun at Freaknik either performing or participating. A lot of people don’t like it, but a lot of people liked it. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, we’re just trying to say, have a good time.

Carl: The media really put a spin on Freaknik. Anytime when you bring a lot of people together, there’s always an opportunity for things to go wrong. But for the most part people came to have a good time. Even economically, it was beneficial to the community. It was a good experience for the city of Atlanta but I think the racism that still exists in the South is what got it shut down.

Are you expecting any backlash from the show, even though you say your intentions are to simply have a good time? You have to know some of the elder statesmen ’s men in our community may have something to say about this. Freaknik was a very racially polarizing event in Atlanta.

Nick: Its going to be a show that is not for the elder statesmen. Its supposed to be funny and fun. If you look up the story about Freaknik: The Musical in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution you’ll see that the headline is a joke saying that Freaknik is back. If you read through the comments, it generates into basically the most terrible, racism with people attacking each other. It quickly snowballs into that. This cartoon is here to celebrate having fun. Obviously bad things happen when you get a ton of people together. The same things can be said about Woodstock and the Puerto Rican day parade. The core of it is supposed to be fun. Matter of fact, the bad guys in the show are the elder statesmen, the Boule. This has been talked about before, there was said to be a group of Black professionals or the Black upper class. We don’t get too deep into that, but we do have a jokey version of it to show that its true that there is a group of people that don’t want kids to have fun and make sure that Freaknik doesn’t exist. The real Freaknik made a lot of money for Black Atlanta, but they might not have supported the business that the government wanted them to. We don’t disregard the other things that revolved around Freaknik. We know people want to watch just to hate on it. Its dealt with on the show.

Carl: When you do something black or urban, we are judged differently. You’ll have Steven Speilberg do a movie with violence and negativity and nothing is said. But we are held to be responsible on a whole ‘nother level. We’re not trying to change the world with a cartoon. We’re just trying to be honest. You got people that are going to be mad. I feel like there is an honesty in what we saying, that’s why it strikes people in a negative way. People shouldn’t get mad at us for putting things on TV, get mad that they exist in our society. We’re giving an honest interpretation of what Freaknik was. If we we’re showing people something that we don’t do, it wouldn’t be a problem, but because we’re putting light on something we actually did, it is. This is a part of who we are, this is a part of our culture. Everybody went to Freanknik to have a good time, it’s about the freedom of expression.

What did you think about Freaknik: A Musical? Funny? Entertaining? True? Offensive? Leave your thoughts.