Who

Once the king of electronica, Moby is better known these days for selling his tunes to the highest bidder, hanging out with socialites, and spouting liberal political views.

Backstory

Born Richard Melville Hall (his great-great grand uncle was supposedly Moby Dick author Herman Melville), Moby was raised in preppy Darien, Conn. where he played in a punk band called the Vatican Commandos. He briefly studied philosophy at UConn before dropping out in the late '80s to move to the city, where he DJed at clubs and caught a big break with a dance remix of the theme song from Twin Peaks. After the track "Go" became a top 10 hit in the UK, Moby remixed songs for Michael Jackson, Pet Shop Boys, Brian Eno, Depeche Mode, and Erasure; he released his first album in 1992 and scored a major-label contract with Elektra two years later. It was 1999's Play, though, that really put him on the map: The album went platinum and reached number one on the U.K. charts. In what turned into a financial windfall (and, in hindsight, a brilliant marketing move), Moby also licensed his music to companies (like Nokia) and film soundtracks (for gems like Freddy Got Fingered), making Play the first album in history to be licensed in its entirety. The deals made Moby a fortune—and the songs' (annoying) ubiquity on TV helped him sell more than 10 million copies of the album.

Of note

In recent years Moby has been less visible on the music front, but he's certainly kept busy. In 2002 the longtime vegan opened Teany, a vegan tea shop/cafe on the Lower East Side, with ex-girlfriend Kelly Tisdale. Moby and Tisdale later expanded Teany's reach with a series of bottled beverages, but he abandoned the beverage business a couple of years later to make his life less "complicated." He now occupies himself with small DJ gigs on the Lower East Side, working on the occasional film soundtrack, and posting political missives on his oft-updated blog. He delivered his first album in a while, a dance music record called Last Night, in 2008.

In person

Once shorthand for downtown cool, Moby's hipster cred has taken a beating in recent years what with his move to the Upper West Side and his tendency to consort with socialites and their suit-and-tie wearing husbands. Perhaps the plainest evidence of his status as "society pet": He's a member of the "creative utopia" in the Dominican Republic that was founded by Boykin Curry and Celerie Kemble, and gets to spend vacations in the Caribbean with the likes of right-winger Fareed Zakaria, hedge fund billionaire Mike Novogratz, and elderly white men like Charlie Rose and Richard Meier.

Personal

Though the scrawny, cue-ball bald Moby may not be much to look at, he's never had any difficulty with the ladies. In addition to his ex-girlfriend, Kelly Tisdale, he's squired actresses Natalie Portman and Christina Ricci, writer Deborah Schoeneman, and many, many others.

Habitat

Moby left the Lower East Side in September 2005 and moved uptown, purchasing a four-floor penthouse apartment in the El Dorado on Central Park West for $4.5 million. (Charles Rockefeller, Nina Griscom, and Bono wrote letters of recommendations to the building's co-op board on his behalf.) He later sold the apartment for $6.7 million in August 2008 and moved back downtown.

No joke

In spring 2007, Moby told a reporter that he has a half-brother he's never met, and joked, "Maybe it's Karl Rove." A few weeks later, Rove himself wrote Moby a letter assuring him that they weren't related, saying, "I have no musical ability…So you can breathe easier."