Photo: Justin Higuchi from Los Angeles, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Moby

Originally from Harlem, Moby spent the early '90s making electronic records — "Go" was an early underground favourite — before briefly swerving into rock with the guitar-heavy Animal Rights, an album that baffled everyone at the time. Then came Play in 1999, which built dance music out of old blues and gospel samples and became so ubiquitous it felt like it followed you around: films, adverts, shops, everywhere. "Porcelain," "Natural Blues," and "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" made him one of the few electronic artists of his era to become a genuine household name.

Start here

Play (1999). It's the album that made him famous, and it's still the easiest way in. "Porcelain," "Natural Blues," and "Honey" are all here, and the mix of electronic beats with old blues and gospel vocals still sounds warm and human.

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Biography

Richard Melville Hall (born September 11, 1965), known professionally as Moby, is an American musician, songwriter and animal rights activist. He has sold 20 million records worldwide. AllMusic considers him to be "among the most important dance music figures of the early 1990s, helping bring dance music to a mainstream audience both in the United States and the United Kingdom".

After taking up guitar and piano at the age of nine, he played in several underground punk rock bands through the 1980s (Vatican Commandos, Flipper, Ultra Vivid Scene) before turning to electronic dance music. In 1989, he moved to New York City and became a prolific figure as a DJ, producer, and remixer. His 1991 single "Go" was his mainstream breakthrough, especially in Europe, where it peaked within the top ten of the charts in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Between 1992 and 1997 he scored eight top ten hits on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart including "Move (You Make Me Feel So Good)", "Feeling So Real", and "James Bond Theme (Moby Re-Version)". Throughout the decade he also produced music under various pseudonyms, released the critically acclaimed Everything Is Wrong (1995).

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