When violinist Damien Escobar was a 9-year-old kid growing up in Queens, N.Y., he busked in subways with his brother, Tourie. Both were classical prodigies; Damien Escobar would graduate from Juilliard at 13. The brothers would soon combine their love of classical music with their newfound love of rap, forming the long-running, and surprisingly successful, hip-hop violin duo Nuttin’ But Stringz.
“Making money, that was my only intention,” said Escobar, now 28. “The music was cool, but coming from the inner city, when you get your first taste of success, the only thing you’re focused on is changing your environment. That journey was completely about money, and the journey I’m on now is about the music and the message.”
Nuttin’ But Stringz played for President George W. Bush at the White House, and for the second inaugural of President Obama. They came in third on America’s Got Talent, performed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Tonight Show, won two Emmys, sold millions of albums, and toured the world.
Things seemed to happen quickly for the Escobars, but “it was a struggle,” Damien Escobar remembers. “It was three years of people saying, ‘No, this can’t work. It’s a gimmick, two black kids from Queens playing hip-hop on the violin. It’ll never work.’ We set out to prove everyone wrong, and we did.”
But the brothers quarreled over musical direction, and Nuttin’ But Stringz dissolved in 2012. “I think both of us wanted to walk away at that point,” Escobar said. “You spend 10 years in a group with someone, you change over those 10 years. We started as kids, up until the point we were men. We both had children. … We had two different stories we wanted to tell, and we couldn’t get on the same page on a joint story we wanted to tell together.”
For Damien Escobar, who had never known life without his brother, the split was terrifying. “It’s completely scary. I mean, I quit. I quit playing violin for a year. I was done in 2012, when we disbanded. I didn’t have the confidence to start on my own. I didn’t know what it was like to perform without my brother.”
Escobar had never had a job and thought one might be fun. He briefly went into real estate. “My first opportunity to work in the corporate structure, I was excited. My supervisor said, ‘I don’t care who you were before this. Now you’re in my house.’ I was like, damn, I was the guy who used to play for the president just a year ago, now I’m here. What am I doing with my life? … I can’t live like this. I’ve got to get back on my journey. I had nothing, zero dollars in my account.”
Escobar slowly began making music again, using his social media accounts to promote himself. He got invited to Obama’s second inaugural (the president had watched him on America’s Got Talent, at the urging of a friend of Escobar’s who worked at the White House), performed on tour with Oprah, and sold 250,000 copies of his mixtape. His covers of songs by Alicia Keys and John Legend went viral.
“It feels so amazing,” said Escobar. “I feel so free.”
Escobar, who records without a label, is finishing work on Boundless, his first solo album of all original material, which he hopes to drop early this summer. “This album feels like if Michael Jackson was a violinist. (It’s got) live instrumentation, a horn section, the Quincy Jones-type rhythm section. This is a statement album.”
The sheer novelty of Escobar’s sound has so far helped him, as has millennials’ unexpected tolerance for the violin. “The violin is looked at something that’s cool now,” he said.
Escobar’s hip-hop/R&B/classical hybrid isn’t going to be for everybody, he realizes, but his childhood as a street performer has given him a tough skin. “I never care what people think about my music. If you hate it or love it, you still talk about it,” he said. “Everyone’s not going to like everything you do. Some people are going to be irritated by it, some people are going to be excited, but you have to do you, and whoever likes it, likes it.”