November 30, 2022
Animal63
Blu Samu's deep soul voice vibrates with intensity, with smoothness and determination. [...] Blu Samu walks the tightrope between joy and melancholy, managing to make it the foundation of her intense and playful creation. At 27 years old, Blu Samu heals her wounds - whether they come from friends, parents, lovers - with her 7 melancholic and rebellious ballads, filled with an elegant luxuriance, where she invites some exciting electronic experimentations. Sometimes, her voice takes a more frontal and rap-like approach (Turquoise, Birds). But then, it becomes more slippery and moist, taking inspiration from the morna, a Cape Verde music style (Pai) or the fado (Amor), with whom she grew up with. Blu Samu always has a vocal intensity that links her seven songs together, switching from English to French and Portuguese. [...] « This EP is about love. Toxic love, lost love, paternal love too. I believe in love. It has a very important part in my life". From her debuts with her first single I Run in 2017, the EP Moka (2018), and Crtl - alt - del (2019), Blu Samu has always talked about love. "Love is the solution to all our issues. Even when it hurts, it brings us an essential experience.". The human bond is what make people connect to each other, and it's the very main point of this new EP. Now living in her birthplace, Anvers, after spending several years in Bruxelles, Salome Dos Santos has worked with French producer Sam Tiba (member of Club Cheval, brilliant producer for Ziak, Zola, Isha, 13 Block, Vendredi Sur Mer...) on 7. He was instantly struck by her voice. A conversation started, punctuated by a growing friendship and an exchange of different kind of music. "Her voice is absolutely crazy », says Sam Tiba. « With Blu Samu, autotune becomes a game and not a necessity ». He has moved her away from the rap of her beginnings and opened her to a more modern experimentations, in the vein of FKA Twigs. "Two songs are a perfect example of our exchanges: Meu Fado Meu from Mariza, and Dr Seuss from Tierra Whack". Blu Samu agrees, the first being her favorite fado song, and the second one, a magnificent piece of melancholy, tender and soft. "7" is the gateway between several emotional, cultural, and artistic worlds, reuniting her youth's idols (Missy Elliott and Sade), recalling Britain's psychedelic R&B (Greetea Pang), or Tierra Whack's velvety rap, blending the traditional Cape Verde music and Belgian rap, solar enthusiasm with electro melancholy, with her determined yet fluid voice as a connecting link, taking down the binary division of masculine and feminine to create something new and different. « Music lets me free my emotions, say what I usually can't, makes myself clearer. Some people can do that naturally, they can express their emotions, apprehend their environment. I can't, I haven't grown up with this skill. And I'm happy about it now because I have music. That's who I am." Sam Tiba adds: "With this EP, Blu Samu offers a very actual and modern music, in which experimentation occupies its rightful place".