As an original member of the legendary group, The Commodores, Lionel Richie helped to craft the “Motown sound” and as a solo artist, the four-time Grammy Award winner gave us life-changing classics (“We Are The World”) and karaoke favorites (“All Night Long”). These days, the 65-year-old music veteran is still touring and mesmerizing crowds, and taking time to reflect on what’s helped to keep him in the game for so long.
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“There’s a word I try to practice in my life called balance and what I use as my equilibrium is my kids,” Richie said in an upcoming episode of Oprah’s Master Class (airs June 22). “They treat me like Dad; they don’t treat me like Lionel Richie. “
Richie’s three children, the most well-known being Nicole Richie, helped to anchor the artist in an industry known for its excess of everything good and bad.
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“Maintaining a quality relationship with your family, with your kids, it’s very difficult,” he says, adding that “success is lethal. You like girls? You get ALL the girls! Like dope? Like alcohol? Now that you have it all, can you survive it?”
“Having kids changed me tremendously because I realized how lucky I was to have a mom and dad. And I started meeting a lot of friends in the business, they didn’t know their dads. They only had moms and some didn’t have moms or dads.”
After hearing their stories, Richie realized how blessed he was and that he wanted to be an example for his own children.
The Tuskegee,Alabama native not only passes on the lessons he learned from his own father, but also the strength of his grandmother. In he late 80s, his grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer and survived to live to be 103 years old. Inspired by her, Richie is a long-time breast cancer activist, raising more $3.1 million dollars to the cause.
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