English recording artist, producer, signer and songwriter David Bowie passed away last week on January 10 after an 18-month courageous battle against cancer. Often honored for effortlessly combining genres and sparking creative minds, Bowie is widely and rightfully held on the highest of musical pedestals. He created a solid foundation for glam rock, influenced major faces of heavy rock like Ozzy Osbourne, Marilyn Manson, and notable metal bands like Guns N' Roses and even more modern industrial rock bands like Nine Inch Nails. But the London crooner's influences don't stop at the many sub-genres of rock, Bowie has also been a major influence to electronic music, R&B and hip-hop.
Let's backtrack to 1990, when Vanilla Ice sampled Bowie's "Under Pressure" in his only notable song "Ice Ice Baby"
And then in 2001 we heard a sample of Bowie's 1975 "Fame" on Jay-Z's "Takeover"
Just two days prior to his passing, Bowie released his 27th studio album, Blackstar. The album quickly became his 10th number one album in the U.K. and the fastest selling release of 2016 with 150,000 copies sold in one week. But Blackstar isn't Bowie's only project doing numbers this week. After the news of his death surfaced, many people went on to discover (or rediscover) many of Bowie's past work, which caused several of his older albums including The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Hunky Dory and Nothing Has Changed to be re-charted and created sales of more than 620,000 (albums and singles combined) just this week.