Turn on the TV to any mainstream music channel, and you can’t help but notice them: young, attractive women flanking big-name hip hop stars. Except these ladies aren’t grinding in booty-shorts to thudding bass beats… They’re seated primly in semi-circular rows playing string instruments with expert precision. They’re sexy “back-up babes”—the latest craze to sweep the hip hop music industry.

Where do these back-up babes come from? Is there some sort of underground hip hop music conservatory tucked away in Harlem or East LA pumping them out every semester? Who are these girls, anyway?

Marisa Kuney - Photo by David Weiss

Whenever hip hop is mentioned, edgy urban centers like New York City, Atlanta, and Los Angeles immediately spring to mind. Yet while Marisa Kuney currently lives in LA with her fiancé, jazz musician and composer Ben Wendel, her childhood is firmly rooted in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The second oldest of five children, Kuney was born to a set of Christian missionary parents, and she credits her deeply religious stay-at-home mom with introducing her to the violin.

“Honestly, my mother chose it for me when I was 8, when she was pregnant with my sister Amy,” Kuney explains. “She wanted me to have a hobby.” But by the time Kuney was in high school, her childhood hobby had transformed into a lifelong passion. By 16, she was already involved with a national chamber music program led by classical music superstar Charles Castleman, who would later become Kuney’s primary mentor at the prestigious Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. Getting into Eastman was a turning point for Kuney, not only in terms of her musical development, but also as a pivotal coming-of-age moment.

“Either you want to go to college in-state and stay near your family, or want to be independent,” observes Kuney, who clearly opted for the latter. Choosing to complete her college degree at Eastman was an enormous step towards self-assured independence. Under Castleman’s musical supervision, she honed her violin skills and finally began to think of herself as a professional musician. But after completing the four-year program and relocating to the West Coast, she soon discovered that surviving as a professional freelance artist has just as much to do with self-promotion, marketing savvy, and personal connections as talent, training, and skill.

“What they don’t tell you in conservatory is that as a freelance musician you’re basically running a small business,” she explains. “And of course, most musicians have zero business skills. We’re kind of the opposite of that. That’s why some musicians who are amazing artists are not successful. You really have to be able to market yourself.”

Not surprisingly, when it comes to hip hop music—a genre with undeniable ties to the fashion and consumer goods industries—successful marketing is all about achieving “the look.”

While her first set of jobs in Los Angeles primarily involved classical orchestras and chamber quartets, it wasn’t long before the feisty, fashionable Kuney began to attract more and more hip hop gigs. After briefly playing with DaKah, a groundbreaking hip hop orchestra, Kuney established the right professional connections to land jobs in the burgeoning cross-over field.

“If you’re easy to get along with, and you’re good at reading pop rhythms, and you have a certain 'look'—that has a lot to do with it, honestly—then you’ll get hired for more and more of those gigs,” she says. “It’s also who you know…it’s not like I decided to be a hip hop violinist, took an audition, and ‘presto!’ got the job. It was more like a series of events, gradually meeting the people who would recommend me for the job.”

But while connections in the hip hop music industry may give you a competitive edge, musicians can’t afford to rest on their laurels. “Once you’re there,” warns Kuney, “it’s all about doing a good job so you don’t get fired.”

“We would travel somewhere, go to a venue, have a two hour rehearsal, then a short break, then a one to two hour sound check, then another break, at which point you’d get your hair and make-up done, and then the show—which almost always started late—would range from 45 minutes to a little under two hours. So it’s a long day,” she admits.

In virtually every city on Kanye’s tour calendar, Kuney joined a new group of local string players specifically hired for the night’s event. Working with an ever-changing cross-section of musicians created additional stress at each performance: “If you got a good section, your day would be relatively easy, but if you got people who were difficult to work with, or didn’t know what they were doing, it was a pain in the ass,” says Kuney.

But continuously rotating backup-band members, never-ending rehearsals, and the strain of constant traveling (often through multiple time zones in a single day) weren’t the only challenging factors on the “Graduation” tour. Harsh weather conditions at outdoor venues added yet another element of surprise. Kuney recalls one gig in rural Canada that made her temporarily question her career choice:

“It was raining really, really hard, with blowing wind. But the girls from the town were so excited to play with Kanye that they did it anyway. So I was like, ‘OK, I’ll do it, too!’ The road manager was literally standing behind us holding up umbrellas to shield us from the rain. It was pretty awful.”

With all of these inarguably unpleasant factors pitted against Kuney and her fellow back-up babes, what made the tour worth the effort?

“It’s all about money,” laughs Kuney, adding that some of the venues they visited were absolutely incredible: “In Japan we played in these clubs that would hold about 2,000 people, which is a small venue, but I liked it because it was small. They had a really cool energy.” Overall, doing the tour gave Kuney invaluable insight into a radically different genre of music than she originally envisioned herself working in.

“Playing hip hop has a different feel to it, obviously. It’s hard to explain. You just have to lay back and play…less on the beat, basically.”

After completing the summer 2007 tour with Kanye, Kuney took a much-needed holiday…and got engaged. With wedding plans in the works, Kuney feels justified in turning down another round-the-world tour offer with Kanye this winter.

“I’m heading up to do a show in Dallas,” she says. “It’ll probably be my last show with Kanye for a while.” But the hard-working gal from Oklahoma is thrilled to be able to spend some much-needed time relaxing at home this holiday season. “I just went to Whole Foods and bought cans of pumpkins!” she exclaims with unrestrained glee. “I’m excited to be home for Thanksgiving.” While her domestic sentiments may not be entirely “gangsta,” it is perhaps her ability to balance a successful freelance music career with family commitments that has helped Kuney soar to the heights of back-up babedom…while still landing firmly on her stiletto-heeled feet.

And as for future projects? “Bjork uses a lot of string instruments,” Kuney muses. “She’d be fun to work with.” After securing a spot with one of hip hop’s brightest stars, finagling a position with the Icelandic alternative pop princess will no doubt be a piece of pumpkin pie for the talented Marisa Kuney.