This week, the music industry is in mourning, as legendary record producer Bob Power has passed away at the age of 74. DJ Premier broke the unfortunate news on Twitter/X yesterday (March 2). “R.I.P. to one of the iLLest Engineers of all time,” he wrote. “Thank you for various pointers in recording from D’Angelo to ATCQ’s Low End Theory, Erykah Badu’s Baduizm and so on!”
The post prompted various other peers to share their own heartfelt tributes to the late icon. This includes Questlove, who took to Instagram to post album covers of some of the notable projects Power worked on.
“Whether you know it or not, one of these albums changed your life,” he captioned the post. “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.”
Bob Power's Career
Erykah Badu also honored Power in an Instagram post shared last night. “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.”
Bob Power was born in Chicago in 1952. He later moved to New York City and then to St. Louis to attend Webster College for music theory. Power proceeded to work in both New York and California, ultimately getting involved in the world of hip-hop.
Power eventually became an Arts Professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He was nominated for two Grammy awards throughout his career. At the time of writing, Bob Power's cause of death has not been made public.
