Edwards wasn’t as prolific as a producer, but did join the one-off supergroup the Power Station along with Tony Thompson as well as Robert Palmer and members of avowed Chic fans Duran Duran he later produced Palmer’s commercial breakthrough, Riptide. Rodgers produced blockbuster albums like David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, Madonna’s Like a Virgin, and Mick Jagger’s She’s the Boss. Their resume includes a staggering run of hits. “We Are Family” has the signature Chic sound: jazz harmony arranged in funky, percussive, sampling-friendly sixteen-bar blocks.įrom here, Rodgers and Edwards went on, together and separately, to basically define the sound of the eighties. Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards’ stupendous production career began with Sister Sledge. Here’s a sample map showing tracks that have either sampled or interpolated Chic.
The breakdown section with the long string build presages “Thriller.” The lyrics are kind of goofy and dated, but what a groove.Ĭhic is best known to hip-hop heads for “Good Times,” which the Sugarhill Gang interpolated for “Rapper’s Delight.” The groove was also the inspiration for Blondie’s “Rapture” and Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust.” The Chic sound is highly infectious. Nile Rodgers treats electric guitar as a tuned percussion instrument, an approach descending from James Brown. He later went on to write most of the disco songs and eighties pop hits that I like, and helped lay the cornerstone of hip-hop.
His Allmusic bio lists various NYC bands he played in before forming Chic, including a new wave rock outfit called Allah & The Knife Wielding Punks. As a teenager, he played with the Sesame Street band, and then with the Apollo Theater house band, where he backed such luminaries as Aretha Franklin and P-Funk. Nile Rodgers has led an action-packed life. He founded Chic along with the late bassist Bernard Edwards, and he’s on Twitter. Meet guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers, one of my favorite musicians in the world.
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