Nile Rodgers Productions

While some disco dons watched their careers go up in flames alongside their albums in the early '80s, Nile Rodgers used his glitter-ball beginnings (as a cofounder of genre icons Chic) as a jump-off point for writing and producing major artists. The first of which was David Bowie, with his makeover of the minute, Let's Dance — a best-selling blend of blue-eyed soul, stylized synth-pop, and shifty funk. To this day, the record remains one of Rodgers' greatest hits, a breakthrough gig that prompted calls from the likes of Madonna and Duran Duran. The chart crawlers and club smashes don't stop coming in our Next Steps, either.

Like most songwriters, producers, and/or performers with a platinum touch, Nile Rodgers has a certain sound — a "listen up!" panache other artists can't get enough of. Rodgers' strengths have been as obvious as a disco dance floor since he cofounded Chic in 1977, bringing a looser, live band feel to a scene that was as excessive as it was exuberant. In the decades since, he's draped Depeche Mode in pitch-dark dance grooves, gotten INXS to shake their moneymaker, and kept the spirit of Studio 54 alive with Sister Sledge and a particularly bubbly B-52's. Wanna dance 'til dawn? Don't stop 'til you get enough…of our Deep Cuts.

With a new supporting cast, Nile Rodgers returned to his rhythm guitar role with a reunited Chic in 1992. The memory-jarring Chic-Ism album did more than save the plummeting sales of polyester, though; it reminded us just how important Rodgers has been to the music industry for the past two decades — from the freakish, Parliament-gone-new wave side of Thompson Twins to the heady, hardcore hip-hop of Cam'Ron and dashing disco of Diana Ross.

Nile Rodgers began his steady rise to fame at 19, when he took the stage as part of the Apollo Theater's house band. Playing with such legends as Aretha Franklin and Parliament Funkadelic, the guitarist/producer/songwriter-for-hire picked up a thing or three –– techniques he first applied to the ravishing and regal disco-funk of Chic. The group was one of the era's most popular parting shots, yet Rodgers refused to fade away when it was tossed into a time capsule along with bell-bottoms and leisure suits. An active music-industry presence to this day, Rodgers has reinvented David Bowie, sculpted and scrubbed Madonna's Material Girl phase, and left a familiar glittery-grooves impression on Diana Ross and Sister Sledge.