Moby

Techno Musician / DJ

Name at birth: Richard Melville Hall

The innovative club musician Moby played punk rock and speed metal before he gained fame in the rave scene with the 1991 dance single "Go." Throughout the 1990s Moby remixed tracks, scored movies, produced other artists and made his own recordings. Although his reputation stems from his dance and techno recordings, he has experimented with other genres, usually playing all the instruments himself. His 1999 album Play proved to be an enduring hit, selling over 10 million copies and pushing Moby even further into the mainstream public consciousness. His other albums include Everything Is Wrong (1995), Animal Rights (1997), 18 (2002) and Hotel (2005).

Extra credit: Moby has often said he is a distant relative of author Herman Melville. In a 2001 interview he told CNN, "The basis for Richard Melville Hall -- and for Moby -- is that supposedly Herman Melville was my great-great-great-granduncle"... He is an outspoken environmentalist and a vegan... In a biography posted on his site in 2002, Moby wrote, "Strange fact: best friend in 1973 was Robert Downey Jr.... haven't seen him since."

Another popular techno mixmaster of Moby's era is Fatboy Slim.