CULTURETECHLENSLionel Richie
VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)
Combined Graph record U-07009 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5743.
Lionel Richie, born Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. on 20 June 1949 in Tuskegee, Alabama, is an American singer and songwriter. A founding member of the Commodores at Motown — saxophonist, vocalist and writer of "Easy," "Three Times a Lady" and "Still" — he went solo with Lionel Richie (1982), whose "Truly" won his first Grammy. Can't Slow Down (1983) won the Grammy for Album of the Year; he co-wrote "We Are the World" (1985) with Michael Jackson and won the Academy Award for "Say You, Say Me." Tuskegee (2012) returned him to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, and his memoir Truly was published on 30 September 2025 alongside a continuing American Idol judgeship and a 2026 North American tour.
Answer summary · this record in brief, from its own record text
Lionel Richie, born Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. on 20 June 1949 in Tuskegee, Alabama, is an American singer and songwriter. A founding member of the Commodores at Motown — saxophonist, vocalist and writer of "Easy," "Three Times a Lady" and "Still" — he went solo with Lionel Richie (1982), whose "Truly" won his first Grammy.
The record
- Also known as: Lionel Brockman Richie Jr., Lionel Richie Jr.
Notes
Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Census Intake Wave 1 — 747 Program, Wave 7; first packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Lionel Richie entity in the live graph at 3,443 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5743 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 3 — Famous Birthdays ABSENT census, readiness rank 218 (R&B Singers list). The census supplied the NAME ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Black American recording figure. Vital status: LIVING — memoir published 30 September 2025; 2026 North American tour announced. CONFLICTS CARRIED: Grammy wins 4 vs 5 and career sales 90M / 100M+ / 125M across sources — printed in full in the statistics line; the discrepancy likely turns on how "We Are the World" awards are counted and is left unresolved. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Can't Slow Down spent 59 weeks in the Billboard Top 10 and sold over 10 million copies (GRAMMY.com). Grammy win totals conflict across sources — four (GRAMMY.com/Live Nation) versus five (Alabama News Center/older bios) — and career sales are reported at 90 million, 100+ million and 125 million in different sources; all are shown, none is blended. MEDIA: photo HELD (candidate: Wikimedia Commons and label/press photography of this subject exists; no file page was read at file-page level in this pass, so no image is cleared — CTL-PHOTO-001; a CTL-created graphic is the standing alternative); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5743-lionel-richie.svg); video HELD (the Shorts Link Map catalog was checked by name and variants — no matching-entity CTL Short exists for this subject; the three catalog string-hits for "Ne-Yo" resolve to Nina Simone and John Coltrane rows, not Ne-Yo billings); audio HELD (no CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio; the subject's recordings are third-party copyrighted material). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio at staging; the subject's own recordings are third-party )
Sources
- GRAMMY.com artist page — born 20 June 1949, Tuskegee, Alabama; first Grammy for "Truly"; Album of the Year for Can't Slow Down — https://www.grammy.com/artists/lionel-richie/17291/ (primary source · build store)
- 313 Presents event biography — 2026 tour; Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2022; memoir Truly (30 September 2025) — https://www.313presents.com/events/detail/lionel-richie (build store)
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Record CTL-E-5743 · Combined Graph record U-07009 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 2 sources.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.
Cite this record
Chicago: CultureTechLens. “Lionel Richie (CTL-E-5743).” CultureTechLens Combined Graph. Chicago, IL: CultureTechLens, 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-5743/
APA: CultureTechLens. (2026). Lionel Richie (CTL-E-5743) [Entity record]. CultureTechLens Combined Graph. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-5743/
MLA: CultureTechLens. “Lionel Richie (CTL-E-5743).” CultureTechLens Combined Graph, 2026, https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-5743/
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