Jimmy Fallon saw a YouTube video of the band and booked them on his show, which helped propel “S.O.B.” to become the top viral track globally on Spotify. The song, as the world now knows, is “S.O.B.,” a bawdy, knee-slapping soul anthem that has pulverized its way through the pop music ceiling. That the breakthrough would come from this burly singer who looks like he could either make a mean craft cocktail or chop off your head with an ax makes it even more bizarre. “But that’s”-he points to a plaster foot-“really weird.”įor all of the effusive chatter and ink that’s been spilled recently over a revival of classic soul, one thing hadn’t yet emerged: a bona fide hit song. “I don’t always take care of myself like I should,” he says. Inside the cemetery’s chapel is a side room filled with discarded prostheses and crutches, tokens of gratitude left by the devout. “We’ve had so many deaths in my family, at this point my mom just wants to be burned up when she goes.” Rateliff, who is thirty-seven, grew up in a deeply religious household in Hermann, Missouri, but has struggled with his faith through the years. “Are those the cheap ones?” he asks with a gravelly laugh, scorched by the previous night’s vessel-popping vocals and postshow whiskey. Now he’s got a few hours to kill before filming a commercial for Apple Music.īarrel-chested and dressed in head-to-toe denim, shades of blue fading into black, he stops in front of a section of graves where tombs are stacked on top of each other, rather than given their own spot.

The night before, he and his band, the Night Sweats, took over the venerable club Tipitina’s, whipping the crowd into an ecstatic froth with their brand of primal, wall-shaking soul. Roch is said to have effected miraculous cures, and if there were one for a hangover, Rateliff would probably take it. Roch Cemetery, one of the city’s most cherished burial sites, Nathaniel Rateliff walks toward the chapel, trailed by Jules, his effervescent wife of seven years.

It’s a warm, sticky November afternoon in New Orleans, the type of muggy that makes you wonder if the locals who say it really does cool off here come fall have had one too many French 75s.

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