In an age of increased awareness of toxic masculinity, there’s something undeniably refreshing about a tune like Wilson’s “ You Are,” in which he describes a partner as “the reason I love, the reason I trust.” The two men also are protective of Wilson’s image as a sensitive romantic. “But he’s so underground that it seemed cool to do it.” “We were a little hesitant with Tyler, the Creator,” the manager said of an unprintably titled song Wilson recorded a few years back with the willfully provocative L.A. They don’t want to present “Charlie as something he’s not,” Paran said, nor do they want to risk alienating his core audience of older folks who buy Wilson’s albums and concert tickets.
Wilson’s manager, Michael Paran, said he and Wilson are careful when choosing which appearances to do.
“Kanye knows how to take my voice and put it in a situation that changes the game at that time,” he said. “Then he turned around to all those West Coast gangstas with all the gold chains, and everybody put out the joints one by one.”Īfter “Tha Doggfather” (which featured Wilson’s vocals on four tracks), Wilson went on the road with Snoop for the Lollapalooza tour, an experience Wilson said reminded him of when the Gap Band played with the Rolling Stones.Īnd the calls to collaborate kept coming - from Mystikal and UGK and West, who built his 2013 single “ Bound 2” around a stunning Wilson vocal that newly showcased his signature emotional intensity. “‘OK, little mommy!’” Wilson said Snoop shot back. “He was looking down at her like, ‘Who are you?’ She said, ‘I’m his wife.’ “My wife pulled him out and said, ‘Snoop, you guys gonna have to put that stuff out, because my husband is sober.’ “We go in the room and everybody is blazed,” Wilson recalled. The scene was Can-Am Recorders in Tarzana, where Snoop, a longtime Wilson fan, was laying down tracks for his album “Tha Doggfather.” In rehab, he met a counselor, Mahin Tat, who helped him get clean they later married, and Mahin began accompanying her husband everywhere - including to a recording session in 1996 that Wilson now says sparked his comeback. “I was the world’s greatest crackhead,” he put it bluntly at his manager’s place as he twisted the tab on a can of seltzer.
soul-music spots like the Total Experience and Maverick’s Flat on Crenshaw Boulevard.īy the early ’90s, though, the singer’s life had taken a turn, thanks to what he described as a series of unfair business dealings, as well as a drug problem that he said led to a stretch of homelessness. Wilson’s natural exuberance fueled the Gap Band as it established a following decades ago with legendarily funky gigs at taste-making L.A. “His energy is like he’s 18,” said Aminé, a twentysomething rapper from Portland, Ore., who drafted Wilson to sing on his acclaimed 2017 debut, “Good for You.” “In the studio, I think he was even more pumped than I was.” And for all the depth of his catalog - other Gap Band chart-toppers include “ Early in the Morning” and the oft-sampled “ Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)” - what seems to excite him the most is the prospect of new music.
He’s a legacy act as beloved by nostalgists as he is taken seriously by aesthetes. In July, after Wilson and Bruno Mars both appeared at London’s British Summer Time festival, Mars tweeted, “I gotta do a song with Uncle Charlie,” as the singer is widely known.įor Wilson, the result is a career that feels unique in today’s pop scene. That’s Wilson delivering the heartfelt chorus of West’s “ No Mistakes,” from this summer’s controversial “Ye.” And that’s him drawing on his childhood singing in church for “ One More Day,” a cut from Snoop’s recent gospel excursion, “Bible of Love.”