Singer, songwriter and producer Charlie Wilson (1953) has been an important player in the R&B field for many years. Music is in his blood; with a mother who served as the minister of music in their home state of Oklahoma, Charlie and his brothers Ronnie and Robert formed The Gap Band as teenagers and scored a string of hits in the 1970s and 80s. The group retired in 2010 after 15 albums, by which time Wilson had also been successful as a solo artist for several decades. In the 1990s, he regularly collaborated with Snoop Dogg,which led to his working with many other artists, such as Kanye West, R.Kelly and Justin Timberlake. His latest album Love, Charlie was released last January. A survivor of prostate cancer, Wilson has been an active spokesperson for the Prostate Cancer Foundation in recent years.
