What’s a nice Jewish girl like Miri Ben-Ari doing in hip-hop? She’s just really putting it down. Ask Kanye, Clef and Jigga. It’s the real heep-hop, heep-hop. Sex and violins, sex and violins!

It’s late March inside a Midtown Manhattan photo studio so far west it hugs the curve of the Hudson River. The studio is teeming with personnel: stylists, assistants, a makeup artist, managers, the photographer, his crew and assorted friends, publicists and staff. There’s music blasting, cell phones chirping and so much happening that when the rap world’s own extreme makeover queen, Lil’ Kim, arrives unexpectedly to talk extensions with the hairstylist, she’s almost able to come in, do her thing and split without much notice. Almost.

In the center of this storm stands, or rather squats, a diminutive woman named Miri Ben-Ari. For reasons only an art director could explain, Miri is crouched down over a folded-up bed frame. It’s a position that requires strong thigh muscles (which, thanks to her devotion to Bikram Yoga, Miri’s got) and steady balance. To up the ante, Miri is undergoing these contortions while dressed in skin-tight, low-riding bondage pants and pointy-toed, needle-heeled “Fuck Me” pumps—which keep getting caught in the frame’s wire coils. Her lips glossy and glistening, her curly locks teased and sprayed into a follicle explosion, Miri might be uncomfortable, but you’d never know it. With a studied concentration, she bears down on the camera, giving the photographer a series of glances and gestures that suggest she’s the keeper of a no-nonsense fierceness, one that tiptoes around the chasm between sexy and slutty. The whole look is straight out of the female rap-artist handbook. Everything except the open violin case that lies, like discarded panties, off to the side of the bed frame.

She isn’t a rapper. She doesn’t even sing. That violin case? That’s not some prop. Miri Ben-Ari has made her bones not because she’s nice on the mic, but because she’s even nicer on the strings. Miri is a self-proclaimed hip-hop violinist. (Possibly the planet’s only hip-hop violinist.) Over the past couple of years, the 26-year-old Israeli has taken an instrument most commonly associated with classical quartets and country hoedowns and brought it into a whole new arena. Armed with a technique rich in drama and melody, and yet as percussive as a drum, Miri is setting out to convince hip-hop audiences that a Stradivarius can be as much a component of the music they love as a Technics 1200. She recently signed a multi-album deal with Universal Records, the result of years of work in the form of well-publicized, high-concept collaborations and live appearances with the likes of Jay-Z, Wyclef Jean and Kanye West. That’s Miri producing, arranging and writing the strings on Janet Jackson’s latest, “I Want You,” and Twista’s “Overnight Celebrity” (she even pops up in the video); she’s also on Brandy’s new single, “Talk About Our Love.” 

Certainly, though, XXL readers will be most familiar with Miri from her work on Kanye’s breakout smash The College Dropout. She’s all over the album, lacing soulful songs like “Jesus Walks” and “The New Workout Plan” with symphonic swing and a warmth too often lacking in top-40 hip-hop. “Miri is so quick with the strings,” says Kanye a few days later, of his choice of lead fiddle. “I felt like she would take my album to a whole ’nother level.” Miri’s quick to return the compliment, too: “I’m so excited for Kanye’s success,” she says. “He’s a brilliant artist, an amazing person to work with. The collaborations I’ve done with him have introduced me more in depth with hip-hop production.”

Being that Miri is the first to ply her trade, she’s basically making it up as she goes along—freestyling, as it were—so she isn’t limited by any preestablished rules. While it’s not unusual for performers to see themselves in singular terms (no matter how closely they conform to current cookie-cutter standards), Miri Ben-Ari is truly an army of one—carving her own niche in an increasingly fragmented genre. The things that set Miri apart from others in the rap industry go deeper than her country of origin (Lyor Cohen’s business acumen notwithstanding, Israel ain’t exactly a hip-hop factory), or the fact that she is White. Granted, in the post-Eminem era, skin color is less of an issue, but it is still worth noting, which Miri does. “I’m Israeli,” she says. “Most people think I’m mixed because of my hair and my lips. People say the Middle East, but Israel is really North Africa. They don’t really see me as Black or White. In America you have ‘Black’ or ‘White.’ In other countries we don’t look at it this way.”

Being the first fiddler to raise the roof is a point of pride for Miri, and she brushes any skepticism about her legitimacy off her narrow shoulders like dirt. Does it bother her that some might see her as a novelty act (“The Amazing Hip-hop Violinist!”)? Miri answers with traces of the bred-in-the-bone aggressiveness common to so many Israelis. “What’s wrong with that? People see me as that hip-hop violinist—that’s how they call me—I’m privileged. That’s hip. You’re spitting a verse, that’s hip-hop. You’re spitting a verse with a violin? That’s hip-hop too. Hip-hop is an attitude. I’m honored. I’m trying to groove as hard as I can, and the hip-hop community accepts me and sees me as part of what they do, as part of their culture. I am in it. Absolutely in it.”

When the shoot wraps, Miri makes her way over to the crafts table (for those who don’t speak industryese, that’s the catered food spread), and eagerly loads up a plate with pasta and chicken. She has little time to wind down and kick back. Currently on tour with Kanye, she’s scheduled to leave early tomorrow to meet him for a club date in Rhode Island. Tonight, though, she’s headed downtown to work on tracks for her new album (due this summer). As she shovels the food into her mouth, there’s no denying the buzz of energy that emanates from this young woman. Chutzpah, they call it. She’s chatty and girlish, but beneath the big hair and pouty lips lies a serious, steely core. She might be tiny, but you get the distinct impression that, if the need arose, she could probably kick your ass. Give all praises due to the one-two punch of an immigrant’s desire to overcome, and the regimented work ethic of a schooled musician. Of course, the pop music industry, particularly the hip-hop wing, isn’t known for such an ethic. Miri agrees. “It’s raw,” she says. “I’ve probably had to make adjustments in how I think and work. But I’m really committed to having fun in my career. Part of the beauty of hip-hop is that it’s spontaneous.”

Even if you couldn’t tell a Stradivarius from a stegosaurus, or a treble clef from Wyclef, you can hear that Miri is serious about her music. Though her genre of choice is one that critics often blast for its lack of musicality, Miri compares the rhythmic innovation and access to improvisation hip-hop affords to that of jazz. “I love the beat,” she says. “I love the groove. I play violin. People say it’s the most melodic instrument after the human voice, and I have a drum machine inside my body. I groove. I studied jazz, but every time I’d write my own compositions they would come out as hip-hop and R&B.”

Born in Ramat-Gan, a middle-class suburb of Tel Aviv, to what she describes as a “culturally aware” but not religious Jewish family, Miri began to play the violin at age six at the urging of her father, himself a violinist. He signed her up for lessons in the intensive Suzuki Method, and she continued classical studies throughout her teen years. Eventually developing an interest in jazz (a similar transition made by the famed French fusion violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, who Miri cites as an influence), Miri moved to New York in 1998. “I trained in classical but it wasn’t for me,” she says of her musical progression. “I loved playing violin, but I’m the type that is outside the box. I came to NYC because all the baddest muthafuckas, this is where they are. You go to any club any day of the week, and you’re getting the best musicians. I knew if I studied jazz, I’d be able to funk it anywhere I want to.”

After attending two semesters at Mannes College of Music, Miri began gigging, playing with such luminaries as the late vocalist Betty Carter and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. A renowned purist, Marsalis has been vocal in his disapproval of hip-hop. Miri, though, maintains he’s down. “Let me tell you something about Wynton,” she says. “He can say all he wants, but he’s a big supporter of my career. He asks me all the time where I play, because he wants to check it out.”