Beck

Beck recorded "Loser" in 1992 in the kitchen of the producer Carl Stephenson, layering a slide guitar riff over a hip-hop beat and rapping half-improvised, surreal lyrics. The chorus, "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me," was a joke about his own lack of rapping skill. Released by a tiny independent label, it became a radio hit in 1994 and made a twenty-three-year-old folk singer from Los Angeles the face of a new, genre-mashing kind of rock.

He was born Bek David Campbell on July 8, 1970, in Los Angeles, at 11:59 at night, one minute before midnight, according to a biography of him. His Sun is in Cancer, with Mercury and Mars also in Cancer, all three in the fourth house, the part of a chart associated with home, family and roots. Cancer is the sign of memory, family and emotional inheritance. A fourth-house Cancer cluster suggests a person shaped deeply by family, and Beck's family was extraordinary. His mother, Bibbe Hansen, had been part of Andy Warhol's Factory scene; his grandfather, Al Hansen, was an artist in the experimental Fluxus movement; and his father, David Campbell, became a well-known string arranger who later arranged music for his son's albums.

Aries is his rising sign, which gives a youthful, restless, independent presence. Beck left school after junior high, traveled to New York, played in the anti-folk scene there and returned to Los Angeles to busk and perform at coffeehouses, absorbing everything from Delta blues to hip-hop.

His Moon is in Virgo in the sixth house, the domain of daily work, craft and skill, joined there by Venus in Leo, Uranus in Libra and Pluto in Virgo. Virgo is precise and devoted to craft, and so many planets in the sixth describe a person who is a dedicated, hands-on worker. Beck plays many instruments and is known for meticulous studio work, layering sounds and textures with obsessive care.

Odelay, his 1996 album with the Dust Brothers, was a collage of samples, rock, funk and folk, and it won him Grammys and wide critical acclaim. Then he swerved: Mutations was gentle and acoustic, Midnite Vultures a funk parody, and Sea Change, in 2002, a raw, melancholy breakup record.

Jupiter in Libra falls in his seventh house of collaboration. Beck has worked with an enormous range of partners, from the Dust Brothers and Nigel Godrich to Pharrell Williams. In 2012 he released Song Reader, an album issued only as sheet music, inviting other musicians to record the songs themselves.

Saturn in Taurus sits in his second house of resources, describing slow, steady building. In 2015 his quiet album Morning Phase beat Beyoncé for Album of the Year at the Grammys, a win few predicted. The Cancer planets in the fourth house came from a family of artists, and he became the most inventive of them.