Sly5thAve

Hailing from Texas yet now based in Brooklyn, saxophonist, composer, and arranger Sylvester Uzoma Onyejiaka II—widely recognized as Sly5thAve—earns acclaim as a skilled musician for both his expressive original material and the polished, jazz- and classical-tinged instrumental versions he creates of pop and R&B tracks. His first outing as a bandleader arrived in 2013 with the Nigeria-rooted jazz project Akuma. Beginning with the 2017 release The Invisible Man: An Orchestral Tribute to Dr. Dre, he has issued multiple recordings on the Tru Thoughts imprint, among them What It Is, the Roberto Verástegui collaboration Agua de Jamaica, and Somebody's Gotta Do It alongside JSWISS, all appearing by 2022; Liberation followed in 2024, blending improvisation and orchestration with hip-hop production aesthetics. Beyond tenor and baritone saxophone, Onyejiaka handles flute, bass clarinet, and keyboards while also programming drums, and he spent two years performing with Prince's New Power Generation.

Born in Austin, Texas, to a Nigerian father and a mother originally from Detroit, Sly5thAve absorbed a rich mix of West African music, jazz, and classic soul during his formative years. He took up the saxophone at age 11, progressed rapidly, and later incorporated drums and piano. Following high school he refined his abilities at the University of North Texas, performing in several groups including the One O'Clock Lab Band. After graduation he moved to the East Coast and collaborated with artists such as James Carter, Wynton Marsalis, Maceo Parker, and Gladys Knight. In that same period he studied under arranger, trumpeter, and songwriter Philip Lassiter, a longtime associate of Fred Hammond and Kirk Franklin; the connection ultimately led Prince to invite him into the New Power Generation horn section.

Sly5thAve stepped forward as a solo artist in 2014 with Akuma, then assembled Brooklyn's ClubCasa Chamber Orchestra to produce jazz-inflected reinterpretations of material by Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Rihanna, and similar acts. His first Tru Thoughts album, the hip-hop-oriented The Invisible Man: An Orchestral Tribute to Dr. Dre, appeared in 2017 and kept him touring worldwide for much of the next three years. For his third album, What It Is, released in 2020, he composed and recorded with Thalma de Freitas, Denitia, Marlon Craft, and additional vocalists and rappers. In 2022 he and pianist Roberto Verástegui completed Agua de Jamaica, after which Liberation surfaced in 2024 as his third proper solo statement despite featuring roughly two dozen instrumentalists and vocalists, among them Verástegui, drummer Robert "Sput" Searight, and bassist MonoNeon.