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The Producer Series: Nile Rogers

Nineteen records from the guitarist who wrote the rhythm part that half of modern pop is still trying to copy.

Nile Rodgers

Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards formed the most efficient hit factory of the late seventies and then, unusually, kept going. Their working method as the Chic Organization was unlike anyone else's: they wrote, produced, arranged and played the records themselves, treating each act they took on as a separate creative brief rather than a chance to repeat the formula.

Rodgers' guitar style is the most imitated element — that clipped, percussive chord figure he calls chucking, played high on the neck with almost no sustain, functioning as a rhythm instrument rather than a lead one. It works because it leaves a hole exactly where Edwards' bass wants to be.

Then came the second career. When disco collapsed and the Chic name became commercially toxic, Rodgers reinvented himself as a producer for hire and made career-defining records for artists who had nothing to do with dance music.

What to listen for

Start with "I Want Your Love" rather than "Le Freak". It is the better record: sadder, stranger, and built on a bassline that never quite resolves.

"Good Times" is the most consequential four minutes here — the foundation of "Rapper's Delight", Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" and a good portion of everything since.

Sister Sledge's "He's the Greatest Dancer" and "We Are Family" are the outside productions where the method is clearest.

Diana Ross's "Upside Down" and "I'm Coming Out" came from an album Motown reportedly disliked and then watched become her biggest seller.

David Bowie's "Let's Dance" is the second-career opener, and Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and "Material Girl" are where it paid off.

The Chic album tracks — "A Warm Summer Night", "Will You Cry", "Savoir Faire", "My Feet Keep Dancing" — are where the band's musicianship is least constrained by radio.

Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" closes it, and the reason it worked is that they hired the actual man rather than sampling him.

Go deeper

Risqué (1979) and C'est Chic (1978) are the essential Chic albums. Sister Sledge's We Are Family is effectively a Chic record with different singers.

Rodgers' memoir Le Freak is genuinely one of the best music books of the last twenty years, and it is unusually honest about what went wrong as well as right.

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