Meredith Ezinma Ramsay (born January 11, 1991), known professionally as Ezinma, is an American violinist, model, music educator and film composer from Lincoln, Nebraska. Ramsay gained viral fame in 2017 by performing a violin cover of American rapper Future's hit "Mask Off", and for her performance during Beyoncé's 2018 Coachella performance. In 2020 she debuted as a solo musician under Universal Music Classics. Life and career Early life Ezinma was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to a Guyanese father and German-American mother. Her father is a professor of actuarial science, while her mother is a creative non-fiction author and works as an English professor. Ezinma started playing the violin at age three, and continued to play throughout school. By junior high school, she felt alone as she was often the only black classical musician onstage, and did not meet another black string musician until she was 13. As a child, she listened to a wide range of music, including her funk, reggae, jazz, and Caribbean soca due to her father, and Americana through her mother. Ezinma attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she originally studied pre-med, before switching degrees to music. At university, Ezinma formed a string and piano trio, and was mentored by members of the Chiara String Quartet. In 2012, Ezinma moved from Nebraska to New York to study at Mannes School of Music, the classical division of the New School, which helped her see outside the rules of classical music. Ezinma began releasing music featuring both her violin performance and vocals, and intended to release these songs on an extended play called I Am Ezinma in 2016. Viral popularity Ezinma began posting videos of her performing violin covers of songs to social media in 2016. Her first cover was a 15 second clip of Adele's "Hello" posted to Instagram. During this time, Ezinma continued to release original music, such as "Elevate Me" in 2016, and the instrumental "Give It Up" in 2017. In April 2017, Ezinma uploaded a cover of Future "Mask Off" as a part of a viral challenge featuring instrumental covers of the song. Ezinma's version gained her millions of views across Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, and led to a sudden increase in her popularity. American musician Beyoncé took notice of Ezinma's videos on social media (even before her version of "Mask Off"), and invited her to perform as a part of Beyoncé's 2018 Coachella performance