Bill Withers Supercharged Hip-Hop’s Crossover Appeal
Teddy Riley and Will Smith would cosign
Last week, the musical landscape changed forever with Bill Withers’ death from heart complications. The legend with an instantly identifiable baritone supplied timeless American music, from the enduring vocal break on his 1971 hit “Ain’t No Sunshine” to the fresh, optimistic vibes of “Lovely Day.” Withers’ genius lived in his ability to create sublime joy in music that seemed effortlessly commonplace — and that joy forged a natural path for rap and hip-hop culture to become universally beloved pop staples.
In the late ’90s, samples of two Withers songs — 1971’s “Grandma’s Hands” and 1980’s “Just the Two of Us,” a duet with Grover Washington Jr. — provided the foundation for two tracks that to this day remain in the pop zeitgeist. Blackstreet’s 1996 single “No Diggity” and Will Smith’s 1997 track “Just The Two Of Us” sold three million singles combined, and you can easily hear them played anywhere from dance floors to radio stations decades later.
“If [songwriter William ‘Stylez’ Stewart] hadn’t played [the Bill Withers ‘Grandma’s Hands’] sample for me, there would never be a ‘No Diggity,’” Teddy Riley told Fact Magazine in 2017. As Riley notes, “No Diggity” works because of the breakbeat created by Withers’ guitar strums and his heavy, low…
