“The Power” became my new favorite dance anthem, crowding out “Pump up the Jam” by Technotronic and blowing “U Can’t Touch This” out of the water. The satisfaction of rapping along with Durron “Turbo B” Butler was different than singing along with the Beatles or R.E.M. Even now, I often catch myself running through these lines from “Blase Blase”: “If you wonder wonder wonder who I be / I’m the superdopeincredible Turbo B / Licking the lyrics skillfully, like a champ / Grab the microphone, and all the suckers are breaking camp”. The raps on World Power were the first I ever willfully memorized, and my efforts bear fruit to this day. Not because “Blase Blase”, “Oops Upside Your Head”, “I’m Gonna Get You (To Whom It May Concern)”, and all the rest were such earth-shattering tracks, but because this album, unlikely as it may sound, proved to be the gateway through which I discovered the rich world of hip-hop. I spent $9 for an eight-song cassette, and I can say without a doubt that it was worth it. But even as I was defiantly popping my Dead Milkmen/Ramones mix tape into my Walkman on the school bus, I wasn’t immune to some of the hits I heard on the radio.īefore “The Power”, my attention had briefly been caught by Bell Biv Devoe, MC Hammer, and even Vanilla Ice, but there was something about Snap! that sent me running to the record store with my allowance money. For the most part, I didn’t mind being labeled as different.
Thanks mostly to my older sister, whose musical taste ran more toward Hüsker Dü than Wilson Phillips, I had already diverged musically from many of my classmates. My memories of the time are of trying to sneak chewing gum into class, going to Friday night dances at the local Elks Club (where DJs from nearby Western Oregon State College would play risque songs like “Do Me” by Bell Biv Devoe), and trying to avoid the wrath of the popular girls, whose favorite sport seemed to be making fun of anyone who wasn’t them. The band produced a number of hit songs, including "You Dropped a Bomb on Me," "Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)" and "Outstanding.In 1990, when Snap! released its debut album, World Power, I was a seventh-grader at Talmadge Middle School in Independence, Oregon, a semi-rural area where farms give way to bland streets of ranch houses. But it was in the 1980s that the group's distinctive electro-funk style would come to define the era's increasingly synth-heavy R&B sound. The Gap Band released its debut album, Magicians Holiday, in 1974. Ronnie would develop into an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, contributing keyboards, horns and percussion in addition to vocals on several of the band's albums. The brothers grew up with a love of music, raised by a music teacher mother and a preacher father. The name was inspired by three streets in their hometown - Greenwood, Archer and Pine - that had defined the "Black Wall Street" district destroyed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Wilson formed The Gap Band in the early 1970s in Tulsa, Okla., with his brothers Charlie and Robert Wilson. "Ronnie Wilson was a genius with creating, producing, and playing the flugelhorn, trumpet, keyboards, and singing music, from childhood to his early seventies." "The love of my life was called home this morning," Wilson's wife, Linda Boulware-Wilson, wrote in a Nov. He was 73 years old, The Associated Press reports.
Ronnie Wilson, founding member of the R&B group The Gap Band, has died. The Gap Band's Ronnie Wilson (center) with brothers Charlie and Robert Wilson, circa 1980.
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