In September, Alicia Renee was performing on Decatur Street near Dutch Alley when a crowd of people walked up to her. The New Orleans vocalist, who’s also known as “Blue Eyes” for her lively natural blues, busks several times a week in the French Quarter, so she’s used to singing to and waving at large numbers of people every day.
This crowd, though, was following a single guy: IShowSpeed, one of the most-followed social media personalities whose hours-long livestreams pull in millions of viewers on YouTube and Twitch. The 20-year-old recently went on a U.S. tour and spent a couple of days in New Orleans, streaming his time walking around the city, eating, meeting people and watching music. He had just stopped to tip a couple of brass musicians in front of Cafe Du Monde, started walking down Decatur and heard Renee’s voice.
“You can see he’s surrounded by people that have a cell phone in their hand, trying to put a cell phone in his face, their products in his hand,” Renee says. “You can see in the video, he hears me first, then makes a line down Decatur to find me.”…