Rock Music News: Divinity Roxx, Grammy Nominated Bass Protégé, on the Life Experiences That Inspired Her New Musical (2024)

I fell in love with the bass and I convinced my parents to let me take a year off from school so that I could pursue music. My dad wasn’t happy, my mom was like, ‘okay, sure, follow your dreams.’ And so I moved back home and I just started playing at the clubs and in Atlanta, and my hip-hop group started to become really popular. We put out records and everything was going really great. I mean, yeah, I was still broke, but I was making music. 

And then a bunch of other things happened. I ruptured my Achilles tendon. And after I did that, all I could do was play bass, so I got really serious about the bass. And then I enrolled in Georgia State into their jazz program, and really started studying and learning how to read charts and things like that. 

And I heard about Victor [Wooten’s] bass camp, and I went. After the camp he asked me if I wanted to go on tour. So I started touring with Victor Wooten!

I taught myself to rap and play bass. And I hadn’t really seen anybody doing that, except for Victor. He thought it was pretty unique and cool that I could rap and play bass too. And then after touring with him for five years, I heard about the Beyoncé audition and went to that audition and got the gig and started to work with her. 

[SEE RELATED: SUPERSTAR BASSIST DIVINITY ROXX — WHO’S TOURED WITH BEYONCÉ — DROPS UPLIFTING BACK-TO-SCHOOL JAM (AND PRACTICE TIPS)]

Rockmommy: So what happened next, after that? 

Divinity Roxx: During the pandemic, I had an opportunity to write some kids music. I had thought it was something that I would do when I got older and settled down. And during the pandemic, I got older and started settling down! I wrote this kids album that got nominated for a Grammy — the last thing I thought would happen. And I just found myself in this really cool community of kids’ music artists and making kids music and having fun and it’s been pretty awesome.

Rockmommy: It sounds pretty amazing to me, like you were meant to pick up the bass.

Divinity Roxx: Absolutely. I say that all the time. People ask me, how did I choose the bass? And I always say, ‘I didn’t choose the bass, the bass chose me.’

Rockmommy: How did you end up in the New York City tristate area, where you live now? 

Divinity Roxx: Well, I met I met this incredible woman while on tour with Beyoncé who ended up becoming my girlfriend and she moved out to Los Angeles with me. After about five years, she really started complaining about how much she hated living in L.A., and she started looking for an apartment in New York. And then we found this really amazing apartment here and and we moved about seven years ago.

Rockmommy: You had that recent Grammy nomination —congratulations for that record, READY SET GO! How did you come up with an idea of doing this solo musical performance at Crossroads Theatre?

Divinity Roxx: Over the years, I’ve developed a lot of skills, because I had to: I had to learn how to make beats and produce because I wanted to make the music that I wanted to make, instead of making music that other people wanted me to make. And when I learned how to really make beats and play the bass and I learned how to loop those two things, I kept thinking, ‘Oh, it’d be really cool if I could be on stage’ … like a one-woman type of thing. 

I also love to write. When I do my master classes, I tell stories about my life and my career, playing bass in between them and demonstrating the evolution of my career as a bass player.

So I’m gonna fast forward to me playing at Crossroads Theatre on a Saturday afternoon during their family music series [a few years ago]. Nobody came, not one kid, not one parent. The only person in the audience was the creative director of the theater. And of course we brought the whole band and my bandmates have kids and they came and but nobody else came.

So they were like, ‘Well, do you guys still want to perform?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna perform,’ because it was one of my first shows two as a kid’s music artist. I needed to do it because I hadn’t done it!  But then the creative director walked up to me after the show — or before, I can’t remember — and he’s a very sweet guy, and he talks, really like a whisper, he was like, ’Do you have a story to tell? I’ve been watching your videos and I just feel like you have a story you’d like to tell.’ And then I told him I was thinking about doing that, and he was like, ‘we want to produce it.’