![]() (Remember “No Diggity”? It’s built around a Withers sample.) Withers has even been a secret ingredient in several major hits. Dre, Kanye West, and countless other rappers. Beats and grooves from Bill Withers songs both well-known and obscure have been sampled endlessly, in classic hip-hop tracks by Eric B. Yet fragments of his voice and music would remain a ubiquitous radio presence well into the 2000s, thanks to hip-hop’s infatuation with sampling his work. So I’m publishing it today.īill Withers, the recently departed ’70s soul legend who pioneered a gentle fusion of folk and soul with inescapable staples like “Lean on Me” and “Lovely Day,” effectively (and happily) retired from the music industry in 1985. I wrote this piece in early April, the weekend after he died, but never got it published. Today would have been Bill Withers’ 82nd birthday.
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