Roger Troutman
He was the lead singer of the funk band Zapp. He was best known for his use of the "talkbox", which is a precursor to what we now call "autotune".
He started his music career in the 70's, but his hit records came out in the 80's.
Zapp had party jams like "More Bounce to the Ounce", "Doo Wa Ditty (Blow That Thing)", "Dance Floor", "Heartbreaker", "So Ruff, So Tuff" and "I can Make You Dance".
But he was also know for some classic slow jams like "I Want to Be Your Man", "Slow and Easy", and "Computer Love" (this song sounds like an online dating song, but it came out in 1986, about a decade before internet use was mainstream).
His music was sampled by many West Coast rappers in the 90's, and his style of music was commonly known as "the West Coast sound" even though he was actually from Dayton, Ohio.
His music was the soundtrack of many lowrider cruises in the streets of California, giving many the impression that the music itself was from California.
But he did collaborate with Ronnie Hudson for the song "West Coast Poplock", with the chorus celebrating the "the city of Compton, city of good old Watts".
(note: Hudson was also not from California, he was from Washington DC)
The chorus from "West Coast Poplock" was later used in Dr Dre and 2pac's collaboration "California Love".
(note: "west coast rapper" 2pac, just like Roger Troutman and Ronnie Hudson actually grew up far away from California, he spent his childhood in New York & Baltimore)
Roger Troutman did a lot of collaborations with many West Coast artists like DJ Quik, Eazy-E, E40 and was heavily sampled by many Chicano rap artists from California (also nearby Arizona, who's Nasty Boy Klique featured Roger Troutman in "Down for Yours").
And Zapp was also got some love from the East Coast, being sampled by EPMD, Notorious BIG ("Going Back to Cali") and Lil Kim ("Download", a 2009 version of Computer Love for the myspace era)!
And in Hawaii, we love Roger Troutman! Our own star Bruno Mars had his "24K Magic" which was heavily influenced by Roger Troutman!
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Sadly, Roger Troutman's life ended when he was killed by his own brother in what turned out to be a murder-suicide. This reminded many music fans of the situation with Marvin Gaye, who was killed by his own father.
Being that Troutman's death came a few days after the Columbine shooting, it didn't get the public attention that normally comes with the death of legendary musicians.
While we mourn his death, we must continue to celebrate his life by playing his music
