By: Tor Aarestad

Driven by a desire to create music that white bandleaders couldn’t play.

By: Lynn Peril

He fit emotive, supple stories into the short, rhythmic space that is a song.

By: Greg Rowland

He invites us to fail better with our every attempt to explore his sonic presence.

By: Lynn Peril

Even his suicide was spectacularly ill-timed.

By: Robert Wringham

She described her true self as an old woman chain-smoking on a front step.

By: HILOBROW

It’s like that, y’all. And you don’t stop.

By: Franklin Bruno

Franklin Bruno on hip hop’s dance crew The Lockers

By: Dan Reines

Dan Reines on L.A. Dream Team’s “The Dream Team is in the House” (1985)

By: Adam McGovern

Soul music was never more literal.

By: Roy Christopher

Roy Christopher on Ice-T’s “The Coldest Rap” (1983)

By: Colleen Werthmann

Colleen Werthmann on Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” (1983)

By: Cosmo Baker

Cosmo Baker on Run DMC’s “Here We Go (Live at the Funhouse)” (1983/1985)

By: Brian Berger

Brian Berger on Grandmaster & Melle Mel’s “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” (1983)

By: Nate Patrin

Nate Patrin on Afrika Bambaataa’s “Death Mix Live, Pt. 2” (1980/1983)

By: Tom Nealon

“Don’t rap about your car, rap about what a car *is*.”