Arthur Baker

BIOGRAPHY

Arthur Baker (born April 22, 1955) is an American record producer and DJ who rose from early-1970s Boston club DJing into one of the defining studio figures of early hip-hop and dance-pop. After relocating to New York in 1980, he immersed himself in the Funhouse club scene and Tommy Boy Records, producing Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force's 1982 landmark "Planet Rock," which reworked Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express" and "Numbers" using live studio musicians rather than samples. That same year he produced Rocker's Revenge's number-one dance hit "Walking on Sunshine." In 1983 Baker moved into remixing, reshaping Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and multiple Bruce Springsteen singles, later working with Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Hall and Oates, and Neneh Cherry. He later ran bars and a restaurant in London before returning to the US in 2015, settling in Miami and collaborating with Murk and Laz Casanova. A memoir and a documentary on Rocker's Revenge both arrived in 2024-2025.

WHY THEY'RE COOL

Arthur Baker is credited as one of the most influential and widely imitated producers of early hip-hop and dance music, pioneering tape-edit and synthetic-beat production techniques on records like "Planet Rock" before carrying that innovation into the pop mainstream through remixes for Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, and the Rolling Stones. His 1984 remix of the Rolling Stones' "Too Much Blood" is regarded as a seminal pre-acid house prototype, and his decades-spanning career, from Boston discos to New York's Funhouse to Miami's Latin dance scene, traces a direct line through the evolution of electronic dance music.

GEORGE'S PLAYS

George has played this artist 3 times.

PLAYED ON WOKE1

• When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky3 PLAYS