Detroit Honors Amp Fiddler with Street Dedication

Detroit music legend “Amp” Fiddler made an indelible mark on the cultural life of his community. On Friday, May 16, his community turned out to honor him. 

The corner of 7 Mile Road and Revere Street in Conant Gardens was renamed Amp Fiddler Avenue. The official unveiling took place down the street from his former home. Amp died from cancer in 2023.

“He was everything, hip-hop and everything in between,” Detroit City Councilman Coleman Young II said in an interview with Local 4 News Detroit. “He was just something that breaks every single music genre. He was versatile. He was like water. Wherever he was, he would just take that shape. He would take that form.”

Born Anthony Joseph Fiddler on May 16, 1958, Amp was raised in Detroit's East Side neighborhood, on Revere Street near Pershing High School. There, he started his musical career with the R&B group Enchantment.

According to a Local 4 News Detroit report, Amp's musical influence blended funk, R&B, and house music of the 1970s and 1980s with the hip-hop and neo-soul music of the late 1990s and the 21st century.

During his lifetime, Amp was a member of Parliament Funkadelic and collaborated with artists such as A Tribe Called Quest, Jamiroquai, Maxwell, Prince, Seal, and Slum Village.

Tombi Stewart, Amp's widow, led the initiative to ensure Amp's legacy was never forgotten. In 2024, Detroit declared May 16, his birthday, as Amp Fiddler Day in the city.

“Amp was sensitive, but creative, bold, and stubborn and caring, giving, but a creative, brilliant talent, and it's unmatched,” Stewart told Local 4 News Detroit. “When people saw him, it's like he‘s otherworldly.”