Gap Band’s Wilson appeals to longtime fans, young stars
LOS ANGELES — Charlie Wilson sat on a balcony at his manager’s home in Granada Hills and took in the view of the 118 Freeway stretching out below him.
The veteran soul singer, who was born and raised in Tulsa, Okla., was reaching back into his memories to describe his earliest days in Los Angeles, where he moved in the 1970s after forming the Gap Band with two of his brothers.
Their first crash pad, as he recalled on a recent afternoon? A two-bedroom apartment in Baldwin Village that the Wilsons shared with 18 other people — not including the woman whose name was on the lease and her four or five children.
“Look, I came out here determined to make it big,” Wilson said, explaining the sacrifice of his comfort. Then he laughed, the sound as reverberant as the booming vocals that would eventually power early-’80s Gap Band hits like “Outstanding” and “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.”
“I never made it big, I don’t think,” he added. “But I’m still trying.” Wilson is too modest. At age 65, he’s enjoying clear success as a solo artist, with sturdy, lightly retro-minded singles that perform well on R&B radio and a healthy touring business that keeps him in front of adoring middleage audiences.
Yet Wilson isn’t lying when he says he’s still looking to expand his footprint. In addition to his own records and shows — his latest album, “In It to Win It,” came out last year — the singer has carved out a busy sideline as a go-to guest vocalist for younger, edgier hip-hop stars such as Kanye West, Pharrell Williams and Snoop Dogg, among many others.
That’s Wilson delivering the 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.”
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 he’s known.
For Wilson, the result is a career that feels unique in today’s pop scene. He’s a legacy act as beloved by nostalgists as he is taken seriously by aesthetes. 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.
Wilson said he’s offered guidance to younger artists he’s encountered over the years — those struggling with the type of addiction or money troubles he knows firsthand. The outcomes have varied.
“I’ve talked till I’m blue in the face with some of these people, man,” he said. “Some people don’t want to listen, and if you don’t want to listen, the bed of nails is there for you to lay on.
“But I’m the industry’s uncle. Somebody’s getting out of hand, I’m there to speak: ‘Just settle on down.’ It’s coming from my heart.
“Everything that you’re going through, I’ve already been there.”
So what’s left to do? Wilson said he’s working on a “special project with special people” but declined to specify his collaborators.
“I wish I could spit that name out, but I just can’t,” he said.