Some of the biggest talk surrounding the third night of Democratic National Convention has not been about any of the major political figures who appeared (including Maryland’s very own Gov. Wes Moore). Nor has it been centered around the legendary Stevie Wonder or the performances of John Legend and Sheila E. Instead, it was a Maryland-born guitarist who stole the show.

After Ariel “Ari” O’Neal’s solo, which capped off Legend and Sheila E’s rendition of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” people immediately took to social media to sing her praises.

“Ok, so we are all agreed that we all need to know her name so we can become a part of her army. Right? RIGHT??” wrote comedian and TV host W. Kamau Bell on X alongside photos of O’Neal playing her guitar while dramatically lying on her back.

“The queen on the guitar is my SHERO,” wrote another X user.

O’Neal, born in Takoma Park and raised in Prince George’s County, began playing guitar at 10 years old. She attributes the area she grew up in for her early interest in music. “It’s easy to get into it because live music is such a big thing in the DMV,” she said in an interview with Boss.

She told PYNK Lemonade The Squeeze that she was mostly homeschooled before she graduated high school, but also attended a summer program at the renowned Juilliard School as a teen. After a stint at community college, she attended the University of Maryland, College Park, as a theater major — after not getting accepted into their music program.

The performance Wednesday was far from O’Neal’s first time playing alongside big name celebrities. She’s played guitar for artists such as SZA, Ariana Grande, Myá, Lizzo, Jay Z and Beyoncé, whose team first reached out to O’Neal in 2017 to see if she would be interested in joining the superstar’s Coachella gig.

“I found out through Instagram. He [Beyoncé's creative director] saw my videos of me playing with [We] The Fix [a local band] and I got the call that I was going on my birthday. They flew me out the very next morning to go to rehearsals the next day,” she told PYNK Lemonade.

The secret to getting those gigs and to be an in-demand session player, she told Total Guitar, is to “post, post and post. … I’m always active on my social media pages, it’s really important … as is being different.”

Part of being different, she noted, is remaining true to herself as an instrumentalist and still leaning into her femininity in what can be a male-dominated industry.

“You don’t have to be a singer, you don’t have to be a dancer, even though those are great things, but you can play like one of the boys, and look like a lady too,” she told PYNK Lemonade. “You can be entertaining and still be a sexy woman playing this instrument that’s sought to be masculine.”

Or, as she put more simply to Total Guitar, “I want to play like I’m an old black man, and still look like a Barbie.”