R&B legend, Charlie Wilson, has always been a straight shooter whenever he speaks- regardless of if he’s spillin’ the beans about his personal past struggles with addiction, or his personal opinions of other legends in the music game. It’s the latter that brings us here today ILOSM fam.’
We dug up a past MTV interview on Mr. ‘Charlie…last name Wilson’ and discovered there was a time when he thought Ron Isley was a hater instead of a congratulator.
The year was 2002, just 7 years after Charlie had become clean and sober from cocaine and alcohol addiction. During that time, he’d watched his fellow Jive Records labelmate, R. Kelly revive Ron Isley’s career and was looking for a comeback of similar sorts.
R. Kelly’s creation of Isley’s Mr. Biggs persona in the early 2000’s put Isley back on the map within the then current state of R&B and introduced him to a much broader audience.
Charlie saw that Kelly had the heat at that time and was adamant about having Kellz produce and reinvent his career as well. So much so, that he even showed up to a random Chicago gym in the hood, just to track down Kelly, as he was playing basketball with his friends.
” ‘1 a.m.?’ ” Wilson asked, recalling his reaction to the time he was told to meet R. Kelly at the Chicago gym. “I was like, ‘I don’t know about this sh–. I don’t be out at 1:00. Those days are long gone.’ ”
“There’s some really crazy dudes in there playing basketball,” Wilson, now chuckling, continued. It wasn’t so funny at the time though.
“Man, I was getting sleepy,” he said. “And I was like, ‘I got on all this jewelry, and somebody is gonna jack me.’ ” [via MTV]
Kelly showed up way later than 1a.m. and to Charlie’s surprise, he came with Ron Isley. Wilson also learned that Isley was the cause of their tardiness, therefore, he thought Ron was hatin’ on him and trying to block him from meeting with Kellz. It was in that moment, that Charlie really got into artist mode and began pitching himself as an artist to Kelly, while shading Ron Isley at the same damn time:
“They was late,” Wilson recalled. “I said, ‘Rob, you gotta be on time.’ They got there around the second half. Rob said, ‘I was ready at 7:00, like you said. I was waiting for Biggs.’ When he said Biggs was late, I was like, ‘Oh, [Ron] is hating.’ ” […]
“I started talking sh–,” Wilson said. “‘I can’t get nobody to produce me. … Biggs, what you gotta do to get your record produced?’ Rob was like ‘Aww sh–. Here we go!’ I was clowning them all. [Kelly] was like, ‘Uncle Charlie, you wanna go to the studio tonight?'”
“We went to the studio and Biggs was mad at me. He talked for four hours till Rob went to sleep. Finally he said, ‘I ain’t mad at you no more.’ I said ‘You shouldn’t be. You talked till R. Kelly went to sleep.’ It was funny.” -MTV
The good thing is that Ron wasn’t hating and Charlie Wilson ended making one of the biggest comebacks of his career with his R. Kelly produced hit, “Charlie, Last Name Wilson” in 2005. Also good news, is that several record labels responded to Charlie exactly how Kelly told him they would after hearing he was working with him- they all came knocking:
“Some labels just don’t see the visions,” Wilson explained. “They’d be like,’Who you trying to target? What fanbase?’ N—a, I’m just gonna sing. Can you put the record out? They was trying to put me in a cubbyhole. For many years they was looking at me funny, I guess. Then after I said I was mingling with R. Kelly, everybody started coming out the woodwork — some of the same people that turned me down! I was like, ‘Dog, I was knocking on your door just last year. You should have hollered.'” -MTV
Fast forward to today though, and Charlie Wilson has publicly stated that he no longer gets down with his former producer-turned friend, R. Kelly, due to the sexual allegations against him.
