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Herbie Hancock
American jazz musician who brought Moog modular synthesis into jazz with his Mwandishi sextet, and later fused electronic production with hip-hop on Future Shock.
Born April 12, 1940, in Chicago, Herbie Hancock brought Moog modular synthesis into jazz in the early 1970s through his Mwandishi sextet, initially hiring synthesist Patrick Gleeson as a studio technician for Crossings (1972) and Sextant (1973) before asking him to join full-time as the group expanded to a septet. Hancock returned to electronic production on Sunlight (1978) and, on 1983’s Future Shock, the Grammy-winning single “Rockit” — co-written with Bill Laswell and Michael Beinhorn, with scratching by GrandMixer D.ST — became an early landmark of instrumental hip-hop and electro crossover.