Receive Weekly Email and Text Message Updates:
Sign up for latest info on concerts, dining, promotions and more!
Go!

Related Stories ...

Reader's Picks

Top Recommendations

A short list of Kansas City's most popular hot spots.
user content provided by: LikeMe.net & The Pitch

National Features >

  • Village Voice

    The Great Walls of Chinatown

    With the exception of the electric rice cookers, this Bowery tenement could have come straight from the Nineteenth Century.

    By Elizabeth Dwoskin

  • Houston Press

    Getting Off

    DUI attorney Tyler Flood wins 80 percent of his trials--even if his clients were 100 percent drunk.

    By Mike Giglio

  • Miami New Times

    Park or Die Tryin'

    From the homeless parking mafia to the meter fairy, finding a spot in Miami has taken a turn toward the surreal.

    By Gus Garcia-Roberts

  • City Pages

    The Baddest Men on the Planet

    Straight from the Sam's Club tire shop, Brett Rogers prepares to meet Fedor Emelianenko in mortal combat.

    By Bradley Campbell

Charlie Wilson

Share

  • rss

By Danny Alexander

Published on May 26, 2009 at 1:44pm

Snoop Dogg knew what he was doing when he reached out to Charlie Wilson for a sam­ple and four guest vocals to enhance Tha Dogg­father, the rapper's 1996 follow-up to Doggystyle. Charlie Wilson's original act, the Gap Band (named for Wilson's North Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood, Archer and Pine, which was once called the black Wall Street and was burned to the ground by white Tulsa in the 1920s), was a '70s and '80s hit maker with a difference. Aaron Hall, of the band Guy, credits them with inspiring New Jack Swing, and it's easy to hear that in the way Wilson's smooth yet powerful vocals hug the band's keyboard-heavy groove on hits such as "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" and "Early in the Morning." Wilson himself recognized how his band's sound inspired a new generation of rhythm and blues with his 2000 return, Bridging the Gap. Since then, he has been everywhere, performing with UGK, Pharrell, T-Pain, Justin Timberlake and R. Kelly. He has also released two more Top 10 solo albums, one that hit No. 1 on the R&B chart this February, and his voice only sounds stronger and more supple with age. Though Wilson has just been through a battle with prostate cancer, he reportedly is cancer free and elated over reaching the highest chart positions of his career. Both a fine singer and showman, Charlie Wilson's visit to Kansas City promises to bring the generations together in the here and now.