'I Turned Shakespeare Into an R&B Opera' Steve Wallace On 3/9/21 at 5:00 AM EST I am a hip hop, soulful, beat-making composer and opera singer, and I began singing opera by accident. Being from the south side of Chicago, classical music wasn't the world that was around me. My dad would have the Lyric Opera on PBS from time to time—rarely—and, of course, it was often on cartoons like Bugs Bunny, but there was no reason for me to ever be authentically interested in opera. R&B, Soul, Jazz, Gospel and Hip Hop were around me in a visceral way. I mean, I know it, like I know the smell of my mom's pancakes on a Saturday morning. It is in my pores. I didn't have to study it or learn to appreciate it, it is me. It makes up my experience and memories and is inextricable from the history that shaped the world I was brought up in.