Nile Rodgers

Nile Gregory Rodgers Jr. (born September 19, 1952) is an American record producer, songwriter, musician, composer, arranger and guitarist. The co-founder of Chic, he has written, produced, and performed on records that have cumulatively sold more than 500 million albums and 75 million singles worldwide. He is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a three-time Grammy Award-winner, and the chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Known for his "chucking" guitar style, Rolling Stone wrote in 2014 that "the full scope of Nile Rodgers' career is still hard to fathom."

Formed as the Big Apple Band in 1970 with bassist Bernard Edwards, Chic released their self-titled debut album in 1977. It included the hit singles "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" and "Everybody Dance". The 1978 album C'est Chic produced the hits "I Want Your Love" and "Le Freak", with the latter selling more than 7 million singles worldwide. The song "Good Times" from the 1979 album Risque was a number one single on the pop and soul charts, and became one of the most-sampled songs of all time, "ushering in" hip-hop via The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", inspiring Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", and anchoring the Daft Punk hit  "Around the World".

With Edwards, Rodgers wrote and produced music for other artists, including the songs "He's the Greatest Dancer" and "We Are Family" for Sister Sledge and "I'm Coming Out" for Diana Ross. After Chic's 1983 breakup Rodgers produced "a string of the post-disco era's biggest albums and singles", including David Bowie's Let's Dance, "Original Sin" by INXS, Duran Duran's "The Reflex" and "Notorious", and Madonna's Like a Virgin. He later worked with artists including The B-52s, Jeff Beck, Mick Jagger, The Vaughan Brothers, Bryan Ferry, Christina Aguilera, Lady Gaga, and Daft Punk, winning three Grammy Awards in 2014 for his work on their album Random Access Memories.

Early life
Rodgers was born in the Lower East Side, New York City, on September 19, 1952, to Beverly Goodman. She became pregnant the first time she had sex, and gave birth to Rodgers when she was 14. His biological father, Nile Rodgers Sr. – a traveling percussionist who specialized in Afro-Cuban beats –  was rarely present as Rodgers grew up; although influential in his life, Rodgers saw his father only a "handful" of times prior to his death in 1970. In 1959, Goodman married Bobby Glanzrock, who Rodgers described in his 2011 autobiography as a "beatnik PhD, whose observations had angles that would make Miles Davis contemplate his cool." Richard Pryor, Thelonious Monk, and Lenny Bruce, often visited their home in Greenwich Village. Glanzrock and Goodman were addicted to heroin, and Rodgers began using drugs at 13.

Before learning to play the guitar at 16, Rodgers played the flute and the clarinet. As a teenager, he played guitar with African, Persian, Latin, jazz and Boogaloo bands. He also became a subsection leader of the Lower Manhattan branch of the New York Black Panther Party as a teenager.