Charlie Wilson is a Black American R&B singer from Tulsa, Oklahoma, born January 29, 1953. As a founding member and lead vocalist of the Gap Band, he spent a decade leading high-energy stage shows behind hits including "Outstanding," "Yearning for Your Love," "Burn Rubber on Me" and "Early in the Morning," recordings that now count among the industry's most sampled songs.
Fame ran out, and by his own account the period that followed left him a homeless addict on the streets of Hollywood Boulevard. A rehabilitation center became the turning point: there he met the counselor who became his wife, and with her support he got clean and sober and returned to his career. He has now been married and sober for decades, and he has described that change as the turning point behind his 2023 single "Superman."
His solo career brought a second act. Wilson has topped the R&B charts with thirteen number one singles and collected thirteen Grammy nominations, a BET Lifetime Achievement Award, a Soul Train Icon Award and a NAACP Music Makes a Difference Award. Billboard twice named him its Top Adult Male R&B Artist, in 2009 and 2020. He has collaborated with chart-topping artists including Bruno Mars, Snoop Dogg, Pharrell and Justin Timberlake, and he sold out two headlining arena tours.
In 2008, Wilson was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Treated early, he has been cancer free since, and he joined the Prostate Cancer Foundation to encourage Black men to get tested, repeating a plain message from his own experience: "We don't have to die from this disease." On January 29, 2024, his seventy-first birthday, he received the 2,770th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the Recording category, on the same boulevard where he had once slept.
