Multi-platinum record producer and legendary NYC hip-hop audio engineer Bob Power has died aged 74.
The news was first reported by DJ Premier in a post shared on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday (Mar. 2).
“R.I.P. to one of the iLLest Engineers of all time,” wrote Premier. “Thank you for various pointers in recording from D’Angelo to ATCQ’s Low End Theory, Erykah Badu’s Baduizm and so on!”
Okayplayer also reported Power’s death.
Among the countless projects Power worked on were A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory, De La Soul’s De La Soul Is Dead, Run-DMC’s Down With the King, D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar, Erykah Badu’s Baduizm, The Roots’ Things Fall Apart, Common’s Be, and J Dilla’s The Shining. Needless to say, he had a lasting impact on hip-hop and R&B of the ‘90s and beyond.
Born in Chicago in 1952, Power moved to New York and then later St. Louis to study music theory at Webster College. After graduating, he worked in California producing music for advertisements and the PBS series Over Easy. He opted to move back to New York City in the early ‘80s, where he got involved with the hip-hop scene, particularly the collective Native Tongues.
Later in his career, he served as an Arts Professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He earned two Grammy Award nominations during his prolific career as a producer and engineer.
In a post shared on Instagram, The Roots drummer Questlove shared a tribute to Power, including the album covers of a number of the countless projects he worked on.
“Whether you know it or not, one of these albums changed your life,” he wrote. “You could NOT encounter a more engaging, enthusiastic, laser focused craftsman of sound and Sonic’s (engineer/mixing/production) I mean he’d let me bug him ad nausea about ‘what does this button do? that button?’ Bob was our training wheels for how to present music. I’m so devastated by his passing. Thank you for changing all of our lives Bob.”
Erykah Badu also shared a tribute on Instagram.
“What a great loss for the music community today,” she wrote. “The great engineer, producer, mentor and friend Bob Power has traveled on. We appreciate you. You taught me soo much. Baduizm is thee most bass heavy singing album in history. … I’m listening tonight in your honor.”