YEAR
1999
INDUCTED BY
Sean Combs
CATEGORY
Performers
Twice is nice.
Curtis Mayfield may be a rare double inductee, but his music is also a two-for-one deal: sharp social commentary mixed with compulsively danceable grooves.
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Brian Chin
Asked once by an interviewer if he was a spiritual person, Curtis Mayfield smiled and said, “I think all human beings are spiritual.” That good opinion of others has stood him — and all of us — in good stead over four decades of music making.
Influenced deeply by the church of his grandmother, the Reverend AB. Mayfield, and surrounded by gospel music since childhood, Curtis Mayfield would find creativity, selfhood and community forever intertwined in his career.
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