Tank and the Bangas Is Unique in a City With Big Culture: ‘I’m Not Typical New Orleans’

“I’m not typical New Orleans,” says Tarriona “Tank” Ball, singer for the group Tank and the Bangas, when chatting on Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast.

Just as New Orleans has a long history of absorbing aspects of different cultures, Tank and the Bangas is a music genre-blender. The group’s stunning mix of R&B, funk, jazz, rap and poetry helped Tank and the Bangas win NPR’s Tiny Desk Content in 2017 and most recently a 2025 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album for their fourth studio album, The Heart, The Mind, The Soul (Verve Forecast). 

“You need to know how to do something in this culture,” says Ball of her hometown. “This is a big culture.” But Ball isn’t always sure she fits in. She says she can’t cook traditional New Orleans dishes. She can’t “second line,” otherwise known as dancing in a New Orleans parade. Nor does she perform classic New Orleans songs like The Meters’ “Hey Pocky A-way” in her concerts. Her relationship with her hometown is captured in a stand out track from The Heart, The Mind, The Soul, “Am I Still New Orleans?”

“Sometimes I’m like, ‘Man, am I still New Orleans if … the only thing I lost in the storm was my way?’ I really love that place,” says Ball. “And apparently, when I’m in the streets, a lot of other people love it too. They say, ‘Am I still New Orleans,’ which lets me know I’m not the only one that feels that way — especially in a city that is driven by its culture. If you are not a part of the bigness of that culture, then you could sometimes feel like an outsider.”

Tank and the Bangas have won over audiences around the world with their genre-blending style that reflects the diversity of her upbringing. “I think it’s the perfect combination of like listening to your parents old records from like Stevie Wonder and Peabo Bryson, and listening to 98.5 with Anita Baker [and] Luther Vandross, and then also meeting new friends around the corner from your new neighborhood and listening and watching Selena for the first time, and watching the Spice Girls, and then not wanting to go to church sometimes, and sitting at home watching the Disney Channel over and over, really close to the television,” she explains. “And then growing up in New Orleans, where you’re just hearing bounce music, and you learn to dance and pop very early on.”

Next month, Ball and her band gets to perform for her hometown crowd at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival — otherwise known as Jazz Fest — with such artists as Lil Wayne & The Roots, Dave Matthews Band, Burna Boy, Santana and Trombone Shorty, a New Orleans local who is taking Tank and the Bangas on tour this month. “I want to tear it up,” says Ball of the upcoming Jazz Fest performance. “I want to give them something to see. I want to have a good time, and I want to execute well. I think this is going to be one of our best performances.”

Don’t miss the entire interview with Ball — listen using the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Music, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand. 

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