Photos by Ava DeGrinis
Blu DeTiger is a bold, blonde, bass baron, bringing funk back to pop. Step aside guitars, Blu’s on a mission to make the bass the coolest instrument on the menu.
You’ve likely heard one of her groovy, bass-heavy discopop songs on TikTok or Alt Nation; she’s been rolling out headbop hits since she came onto the music scene a couple years ago. Blu’s one of those people that is always hustling and the past three years have been no different: she’s embarked on three headline tours, opened for Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Emails I Can’t Send’ tour, played alongside the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Dominic Fike, and Bleachers (on SNL!), performed at major festivals like Bonnaroo and Life Is Beautiful, all while working on new music and putting out her first debut album.
If you’ve ever been to one of Blu’s shows, you understand the magnetism she alchemizes, a blur of blonde and blue vibrating and thrashing across the stage. On Saturday I got the opportunity to see her live in LA at the iconic Troubador on her ‘All I Ever Want Is Everything’ album tour. Just like the dozens of shows I’ve seen before, she and her bass commanded the musical pulpit, igniting the crowd and stirring a sense of collective musical reverence. Fans decked out in ‘Bass Queen’ gear mimicked Blu’s on-stage ferver, gleefully bopping around and screaming her lyrics back to her with hands raised in unison. Blu engaged with the crowd, shouting out die-hards, grabbing hands, and even giving one enthusiastic aficionado the chance to hold the mic and sing the lyrics to ‘Night Shade.’ The only thing more exciting than her earsplitting, head-banging stage entrance was her crowd-demanded encore re-entrance where she finished out her set with a bang playing ‘Overdrive.’
Blu and I have been friends for many years, so I’ve had a front row view of her remarkable rise to stardom – from aspiring DJ, known for playing live bass over her sets at NYC’s hottest clubs, to a world renowned rockstar, known for whipping her hair and shredding bass on some of the world’s biggest stages. We met when we were students at NYU in 2018; she was in the prestigious Clive Davis musical program and I went to the business school. From the moment I met her, I could tell that she was bound to be a star, not just from her decade and a half of bass playing experience and impressive collection of sequined jumpsuits and platform boots, but because of her extreme passion and dedication to her trade.
I remember Sophomore year we lived together in a 6-story walk-up apartment in Little Italy and I would hear her getting back from one of her gigs at 4am, just to be out the door on the way to class at 8am that same morning. She would hop on a plane at a moment’s notice on weekends to perform as a session bassist for other bands, no matter what social sacrifices she had to make. She never turned down an opportunity; she was (and still is) a fine tuned melodic machine which sets her apart from the rest. Although it may seem like Blu’s skyrocketing success was an overnight TikTok phenomenon, the reality is that her triumphs are the product of decades of perseverance, sacrifice and utter obsession with her instrument.
Blu, a tried and true New Yorker, is now living on the west coast in LA and invited me over to her apartment in the heart of Echo Park to discuss her debut album, the tour she was about to embark on and her crush on the ‘Bluberries’ over some fresh iced matcha lattes.
Blu has been releasing music under her own moniker for a little over 5 years now, and just put out her debut LP album, ‘All I Ever Want is Everything.’ When confronted with how she felt releasing her first multi-chaptered opus captured over the past few years, she explained that although it feels great to have the music out in the world, it won’t feel real until she plays it live.
“It still doesn’t feel like a bunch of stuff is out until I really see people’s reactions face to face. It feels really good, but I feel like the tour is going to make it feel even more real and I’ll see how it’s actually affecting people. It’s just so hard to tell online these days, so I’m really excited for tour.”
Experiencing her ‘A.I.E.W.I.E.’ set first hand a week later was a thrill; the crowd was enthralled, belting out and whirling to her new songs as if they had known and loved them for years. Blu’s album is brimming with groovadelic basslines and infectious rhythms (music literally made for hair whipping), layered with empowering, call-your-girlfriends-and-scream-into-the-phone lyrics which has become her trademark dance-inducing sound. However, one song on the album steps out of the boogie-bound recipe and leans into a more introspective tone: the 9th song in, ‘Imposter Syndrome,’ is a reflection on feelings of doubt during a period of transition in her life:
I can’t internalize or synthesize, just criticize what I’ve done
Somebody pull me out, I just wanna go home
Should know who I am by now, imposter syndrome
When discussing the track, she offered some backstory behind the creation of it, explaining how she had just been signed to her record label, flying back and forth from NYC to LA to work in sessions with countless producers and writers, qualifying that time as “the LA grind,” a seemingly right of passage for up and coming artists. She recounted, “I was just in a really weird headspace because it was like I just got signed, the pandemic was just starting to end, I was meeting a lot of the other contemporary artists that I knew online, but I had never met. I was doing all these sessions, and I suddenly had a bunch of fans. It was just a weird time where I felt a lot of imposter syndrome.” She explained she was getting in her own head with self-doubts: “It was like ‘Oh, now I’m in LA’ and I was feeling a lot of different things: pressure because I just signed my label and I had to make more music and I was like, I don’t know what I want to make.” At that time she was doing sessions with producer Ralph Castelli and he suggested she should channel her emotions through music and write a sad song to reflect on how she was feeling. She wryly recounted her initial response: “At that time, I had never written a sad song. It was just not my vibe because I was like, ‘Why would I want to be sad? I’ll just make happy music and then listen to happy music.’ It was foreign to me. But now, obviously, I get it.” She ended up putting pen to paper and finished the song in 30 minutes. “It was really honest.. it was just exactly how I was feeling.”
When Blu played the song live, time in the theater slowed down and lighters and phones materialized on the scene. Fans swayed in unison and connected over the sincere and oh-so-relatable message.
Photo by @sophiegw__
Blu has stolen the hearts of people all over the world by sharing her music and groovy bassline covers online, even inspiring many men and women of all ages to pick up the instrument themselves, which she declared was her life’s mission.
“Honestly anytime someone comes up and tells me they started playing bass because of me, that’s a huge thing. That’s literally my mission. That’s my goal. Introducing the bass to new players and showcasing what the instrument can do. I started to play music when I was young and having that passion when I was young changed my life, it saved my life. I feel like I’m living a very fulfilling life now and that’s all because of music and if I can bring that to someone, introduce someone to that, it’s so cool. So when people come up to me and say ‘I started playing bass because of you,’ that’s the dopest sh*t ever.”
Blu maintains an ongoing stream of communication with her fans by offering them daily engaging content on social media, releasing new music regularly, producing music videos, going on tour, even offering fans a number to text her directly – the self-proclaimed ‘Bluberries’ always have fresh pieces of the Blu story to sink their teeth into.
Moreover, she goes above and beyond external comms to thin the veil between herself and her fans, bringing them into her physical world and providing opportunities for fans to forge a deep connection with her and her art. Her last tour, she went as far as bringing up a bass-playing fan from the crowd every show to play alongside her. “I just picked them from the crowd randomly, it was not planned at all. It was so cool, it felt like a really special experience.” She added that for one of the fans it was actually her first time ever playing it, so she taught her on stage. She reflected on the moment, “I just think it’s like, if I ever had that experience when I was young, it would change my whole life, so I want to be able to do that for other people.”
When discussing promos for her recent album, she shared that she invited fans to a listening party in 3 different major cities to connect with them IRL while giving them a sneak peek of the upcoming album.
“I put together all these fan meetups right before the album came out in LA, London, and New York. It was really cute. We did it in the park, and I had fans come through, and I played them the songs on these really cool, custom headphones. They got to hear the songs weeks before the album came out, and we filmed the reactions, it was such a vibe. We literally just hung out in the park and we talked for two hours.”
Following these early previews, a week before she released her album, she invited her followers to join her at an intimate listening experience at NYC’s iconic Electric Lady Studios where she chatted with fans and gave some background to each song on the album to amplify their experience. When I asked her how she spread the word she said, “I just put it on Twitter and Instagram and said ‘If you guys want to come, text me, message me for details.’ It was just such a wholesome hang where we just talked about the music, and they got to meet each other.”
When posed with the question of how these thoughtful, engaging ideas come to her, she responded simply, “I want to give them as much as I can.” She further reflected on the root of her inspiration: “I just think that it creates a long-term community and people feel accepted. I feel like fans should feel seen. It’s just going to create a better overall love for the music and for what I’m doing and the journey.” She explained that she’s taken an IRL approach to engaging fans because recently it’s become increasingly difficult to reach people through social media, regardless of how many followers you have. “There’s just so much out there… You just never know who it’s hitting. So my new philosophy this year for this album was to just go straight to the source.”
Blu picked up the bass when she was 7 years old and performed her first show at CBGB later that same year. She explained after so many years, the instrument felt like an additional limb “I feel like it’s just part of me now, it’s almost like an extension of my arms.” Her long-term relationship with the instrument is deeply rooted in her ‘musical DNA,’ translating to her instinctually ingesting music from a bass-centric lens. “It was my first instrument, it’s where I started. So it’s still how I hear and feel music, through the bassline… The soul of the song usually comes from the bass; it drives the song, or it’s the melody or the catchy part, or it’s the backbone. It hits all the marks.”
From the moment Blu figured out she wanted to be a world renowned bassist, she prioritized that vision above all else. She recalled many instances of needing to sacrifice time with friends when she was young so she could practice. “I would miss sleepovers all the time. I remember all my friends in middle school would hang out on Fridays after school and get food and hang out in the park and just chill but I always had my bass lessons on Fridays.” She added, “It was hardest when I was in middle school when you didn’t know if it would matter later… But in my head, I was like, ‘No, I actually think it’s going to add up and make a difference.’” She reflected on the decisions she made in her youth saying, “I think it was the best decision I made because I knew where the priority was. And also I just really loved doing it; I really liked it. I think I was just in touch with myself at a young age and I was really intuitive about life.” Blu’s expeditious self discovery paired with her unwavering commitment to her vision served as jet fuel, propelling her into her “All I Ever Want Is Everything” coded life.
After downing the last of my now warm matcha latte, I pushed away my notepad of easy questions and pulled up the quiz that would really make her break a sweat!! 
Dream venue: MSG
Favorite bass guitar you own: My custom Fender Jazz Bass
Knicks or Lakers: Knicks
Best album of all time: Oh, f*ck. My album… hahaha
Light mode or dark mode: I like when it switches automatically
Dream Clothing Brand collab: YSL, probably
Go-to karaoke song: Dancing On My Own – Robyn… or Sweet Escape – Gwen Stefani
Preferred caffeine vessel: Matcha (obviously)
Dream band of Musicians, Alive or Dead to play with you: Prince, Bowie, Taylor Swift, Beyonce
Describe your sound in three words: Groovy indie-pop with a New York edge
Keep up with Blu on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter
