Rolling Stone reports that Jimmy Castor, the great ’70s hard-funk bandleader, died of unknown causes in Las Vegas yesterday. He was 64.

As the main behind the Jimmy Castor bunch, Castor perfected a form of nasty, uncompromising dance-funk, perhaps best exemplified by the utterly crushing 1973 hit “Troglodyte.” (Chuck Eddy, the great iconoclastic rock critic, ranked the Jimmy Castor Bunch’s Phase Two as one of the 10 greatest metal albums of all time in his book Stairway To Hell, which ought to give some idea how heavy this stuff sounded.) Castor’s songs have been sampled scores of times throughout rap history, with greats like N.W.A, Eric B. & Rakim, the Jungle Brothers, and Kanye West building tracks from his music. Below, watch a video of Castor performing “Troglodyte.”