Chic: C'est Chic : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Chic are the disco band to which rockers, hip-hoppers, soul fans and funkateers all give props, and for good reason: Guitarist Nile Rodgers, bassist Bernard Edwards and drummer Tony Thompson comprised one of the tightest and most influential rhythm sections of the last thirty years. The group's second and most popular album, 1978's C'est Chic, is also its most consistently satisfying. Inspired by Rodgers and Edwards being barred entrance at celebrity disco Studio 54, "Le Freak" (original title: "Fuck Off") boasts some of the most angular instrumental interplay this side of James Brown, and it became Atlantic Records' best-selling single ever. The follow-up "I Want Your Love" swirls around a tricky horn-and-strings riff that builds and builds until the track practically levitates. (Both hits feature a young Luther Vandross belting in the background.) "Chic Cheer" provides a titanium groove eventually sampled for Faith Evans' "Love Like This." The real surprise is the seven-minute ballad "At Last I Am Free," soon covered by prog-rock iconoclast Robert Wyatt: As Chic vocalist Alfa Anderson aches at a relationship's end, Edwards spins supremely melodic bass lines that flesh out sorrows the skeletal lyrics only suggest. Chic's final pop blockbuster, 1979's "Good Times," inspired both Queen's improbably funky "Another One Bites the Dust" and the Sugarhill Gang's early hip-hop milestone "Rapper's Delight," while the core trio's production, songwriting and playing skills went on to ignite the Eighties sound of David Bowie, Madonna, Diana Ross, Duran Duran, Mick Jagger, the B-52's and others. Although Edwards died in 1996 and Thompson in 2003, Chic's legacy of studio sophistication and rhythmic sass grooves on.