A summertime golf game between two high-school band teachers decided the musical fate of Wilner “Wil B” Baptiste. Though the teenaged Bahamian immigrant had his heart set on learning the saxophone, his future string instructor beat the brass master at 18 holes. With a pivotal winning shot, Baptiste’s dreams of thumbing sultry numbers in jazz clubs for tips vanished, and instead he began learning bowing techniques on his brand-new viola.
Baptiste was invited to enroll in a performing arts high school the following year, where he excelled in viola and met Kevin “Kev Marcus” Sylvester, a fellow Black string player who’d become a lifelong friend and the other half of their classically influenced hip-hop group Black Violin.
As freshly minted college graduates, Baptiste and Sylvester initially sought to become the next Neptunes. Together they reinvented radio hits, infusing pop music with Bach-informed baroque and the sounds of old-school rap from their youth. The duo’s first tracks often clocked in around 10 minutes, and consisted of both original compositions and mash-ups that they performed in nightclubs around Miami. The moniker they decided on, Black Violin, is a nod to Black violinist Stuff Smith and his 1965 album of the same name.