Planet Rock: The Album is an old school hip hop album by Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force, released in 1986 as a collection of previous singles. The song "Planet Rock" was one of the earliest hits of the hip hop music genre and remains one of its pioneering recordings. The single's liner notes include members of Kraftwerk with the songwriting credits. In creating the track, portions of Kraftwerk's "Numbers" and "Trans-Europe Express" were interpolated, along with portions of songs by Captain Sky and Ennio Morricone.
Mantronix was an influential 1980s hip hop and electro funk music group from New York City. The band was formed by DJ Kurtis Mantronik and rapper MC Tee. The group is primarily remembered for its pioneering blend of old school hip hop, electronic, and club music. They underwent several genre and line-up changes during its seven-year existence between 1984 and 1991, and released five albums beginning with their 1985 debut The Album.
Rajinder Singh Rai, better known by his stage name Panjabi MC, is a British-Indian recording artist, rapper, record producer and DJ. He is best known for the worldwide Bhangra 2002 hit "Mundian To Bach Ke", which sold 10 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time. Among other songs, he gained acclaim with the 2003 release "Jogi". AllMusic has called him "one of the most prominent names in bhangra".
Chris Barbosa is an American record producer and Freestyle pioneer from New York.
Maximilian Lenz, known by his stage name WestBam, is a German DJ and musician. He is the co-founder of the record label Low Spirit.
Planet Patrol is an American electro group originating in the 1980s. The members were Arthur Baker, John Robie, and a quintet of vocalists led by Herbert J. Jackson, Joseph Lites, Rodney Butler, Michael Anthony Jones, and Melvin B. Franklin. The group only produced a single album, the self-titled Planet Patrol in 1983, which peaked at #64 on the Billboard R&B Albums chart.
Jocelyn Enriquez is a Filipino American dance-pop singer born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her most popular songs are "Do You Miss Me", "A Little Bit of Ecstasy", and the Stars on 54 cover of Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind". Her success helped inspire and pave the way for many Asian American, particularly Filipino Americans from the San Francisco Bay Area, artists during the mid to late 1990s such as Buffy, Kai, One Vo1ce, Pinay, Sharyn Maceren, and others.
Kurtis el Khaleel, known by the stage name Kurtis Mantronik, is a Jamaican-born hip hop and electronic-music artist, DJ, remixer, and producer. He was the leader, DJ, and keyboardist of the influential 1980s hip hop and electro-funk group Mantronix. He currently lives in South Africa where he has produced and remixed house and techno music tracks by artists such as India, Junior Senior, Kylie Minogue, Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, Michael Gray, Victoria Beckham, Liberty X, S Club, and Mim. Mantronik was influential in the development of hip hop music: notably, he laid the foundations for Southern hip hop genres such as Miami bass and trap music, and helped popularize the Amen break.
Artists United Against Apartheid was a 1985 protest group founded by activist and performer Steven Van Zandt and record producer Arthur Baker to protest against apartheid in South Africa. The group produced the song "Sun City" and the album Sun City that year, which is considered a notable anti-apartheid song.
Gino Soccio is a Canadian disco record producer based in Montreal. His only US Billboard Hot 100 entry was the #48 hit single "Dancer" in 1979, but he did hit #1 on the US Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart twice. "Dancer" peaked at #46 in the UK Singles Chart in May 1979. Soccio's third biggest hit, "It's Alright" / "Look at Yourself", from his album, Face to Face, reached #2 for 5 weeks also on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. "Turn It Around" was released only as a single in 1984.
Will to Power is an American dance-pop group that originated in South Florida in the mid-1980s, founded by Miami producer Bob Rosenberg. The group recorded a number of hit singles on the Billboard dance and pop charts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, most notably "Baby, I Love Your Way/Freebird Medley", a medley of 1970s hits by Peter Frampton and Lynyrd Skynyrd that reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1988. A second hit was "I'm Not in Love", a cover of 10cc's 1975 hit: number 7 on Billboard Hot 100 in 1990.
Marc Kinchen, known by his initials MK, is an American DJ, record producer and remixer. He hit number-one on the US Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1993 and 1994 with the songs "Always" and "Love Changes". Lead vocals on both of those tracks were performed by Alana Simon. The combo also recorded the underground house music classic anthem "Burning". "Always" peaked at number 69 on the UK Singles Chart in February 1995. MK also hit the dance chart with "4 You", using the pseudonym 4th Measure Men.
"Disco Inferno" is a song by American disco band the Trammps from their 1976 studio album of same name. With two other cuts by the group, it reached No. 1 on the US Billboard Dance Club Songs chart in early 1977, but had limited mainstream success until 1978, after being included on the soundtrack to the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, when a re-release hit number eleven on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
"Whatever You Want" is a song performed by American recording artist Tina Turner from her ninth studio album, Wildest Dreams (1996). It was written by Arthur Baker, Fred Zarr, and Taylor Dayne and is noted for its different levels of energy and strong vocal performance, as well as its orchestral arrangement and complex production, courtesy of producer Trevor Horn.
Fuel for the Fire is the second album by British duo Naked Eyes, released in 1984. The band had top 40 success with the first single off the album, "(What) In the Name of Love", produced by Arthur Baker, which reached No. 39 in the US on the Billboard Hot 100, and in a remix by Baker, No. 35 on the Dance chart. The album peaked at No. 83 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart.
"Planet Rock" is a song by the American hip hop artists Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force. The song was produced by Arthur Baker and released by Tommy Boy Records in 1982. The recording came together after DJ and producer Baker met with Bambaataa and the two bonded over the idea of creating a song about their mutual appreciation for the band Kraftwerk. Baker and Bambaataa had worked together previously on the song "Jazzy Sensation" and decided to compose a more electronic based version of the hip hop song, as opposed to the more disco-oriented work popular at the time. Along with musician John Robie, the group recorded the single at Intergalactic Studios in New York. Robie duplicated the sound on the record and had Bambaataa's rappers in the Soul Sonic Force rap over it. To create the raps, the lyricist of the group, Emcee G.L.O.B.E., had to develop a style he called "mc popping", which involved rapping off time, an unusual style at the time.
Graham Stack is an English born record producer and songwriter who has written and produced hit records for many artists including James Arthur, JLS, Kylie Minogue, Take That, LeAnn Rimes, Tina Turner, Girls Aloud, Atomic Kitten, Steps, Westlife, Donna Summer, Rod Stewart, Il Divo and Natalie Cole.
Mark Picchiotti is an American DJ, producer, remixer and songwriter based out of Chicago, Illinois. As a remixer and producer, Picchiotti has amassed 24 number one singles on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, and he has remixed such artists as Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Daft Punk, The Killers, AC/DC, Florence and The Machine, Amy Grant, Foster The People, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Sia, Sybil, Enriqué Iglesias, and Mary J. Blige. In 2002, he produced and co-wrote the Kylie Minogue single “Give It To Me” for her 8x-Platinum album Fever. Picchiotti was also voted one of the 40 most influential remixers of all time by UK publication Blues & Soul Magazine. His DJ residencies at nightclubs in his hometown of Chicago have included Shelter, Smartbar, Berlin, Crobar, and Medusa’s; as well as UK nightclubs Ministry of Sound (London) and Hard Times (Leeds). He continues to travel the globe performing at notable clubs such as Pacha (Portugal) and El Divino (Ibiza). He has also headlined the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival and DJed its infamous daytime after-party Laneway.
Lance Taylor, also known as Afrika Bambaataa, is an American DJ, rapper, and record producer from South Bronx, New York City. He is notable for releasing a series of genre-defining electro tracks in the 1980s that influenced the development of hip hop culture. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the originators of breakbeat DJing.
DJ Mog is a Northern Irish house music DJ and producer, known for the single "Somewhere" which reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Airplay chart.
