Charlie Bereal Talks His New Album, Walking With The Father

Charlie Bereal songs are embedded with all the aesthetic and thematic cues of a bygone era. But his descriptions of church Sundays conjure an otherworldly timeliness — at once of the recent past and today.

For those humid Pasadena afternoons, Charlie remembers cruising in a baby blue 1974 Cadillac with his father Buddy, a uniquely Black renaissance man who found time to be a preacher, boxer and president of the NAACP’s Pasadena chapter. When he wasn’t those things, though, he was a father trying to expose his son to some good tunes. Coasting along for rides either to or from church — or to Sundries, a Black-owned liquor store that served the best burgers — he’d absorb the sounds of his father’s tape collection, an immersive constellation of Frankie Beverly, George Benson, and other luminaries that defined soul music.

“I was hearing it, but I wasn’t listening,” Bereal recalls. “It wasn't until 2014 it started really, really resonating.” Today, the singer-multi-instrumentalist has repurposed elements of those sounds to deliver Walk With The Father, a retro soul masterpiece that evokes Teddy Pendergrass, Curtis Mayfield and multiple soul icons in between. Wielding a hazy falsetto and a hard-earned musical mastery he developed as a Grammy-winning instrumentalist who worked for Timbaland, Aaliyah, Busta Rhymes, and Toni Braxton. While it was recorded over the course of just two weeks, it’s the end result of clumsy genre experimentation, tireless nights, and reincarnated confidence.

Speaking with LEVEL, Bereal discusses his inspiration for the album, his career as an instrumentalist, and signing with Snoop Dogg’s new Death Row Records.

A gospel album coming out on Death Row still feels strange to me. How did you connect with Snoop Dogg for this?

Before I got to Death Row, I was sitting in a church and a pastor prophesied to me that I was going to get help with my music. The very next day, I got help from Josef Leimberg and then he shot me Snoop Dogg's number and then Snoop Dogg was like, “I want these records.” Me being on Death Row Records was, it's like a dream come true. I've always been a fan of Snoop Dogg and he gave me my flowers. I felt like this whole movement has been a double entendre. I'm walking with my father [who I lost not too long ago] and I'm walking with the father in heaven.

Can you explain the album title, Walk With the Father?

It was a song that I did called “Walk With the Father.” It just started sticking the more and more I was creating the record. That was my dad's swag. That's what he listened to. My dad played percussion. He dressed a certain way. He was just real Black. He was the president of the NAACP Pasadena branch.

Paint me a picture: What did a normal Sunday look like with you and your father?

On a typical Sunday, we’d all go to church. All of my cousins would be on the instruments [in the church band]. One of my cousins who played piano on the album played organ at the church. My cousins all played. I was young and I was like, “I want to do that too.” I used to sing in the kids' choir, but I was like, "I don't want to sing. That's for punks. I want to play instruments.” And that was a typical church day, just me watching and hoping I could get my turn to play the drums.

When did you realize that you had a good singing voice?

I want to say 6. I actually felt like I sang better when I was younger. I took my voice for granted. I didn't think being able to sing was special because everybody can sing in my family, except for my dad. Then I just stopped for a long time, I don't even remember opening my mouth, ’cause I was playing guitar and then me and my brother got in an argument. I was like, “Man, you can't sing. I could sing.” And then when I opened my mouth, my voice changed. It got deep. I couldn't sing like that and it took me so long to find my voice again. I went through a phase where I got very self-conscious about my singing. I had a lawyer tell me straight to my face, “You can't sing. I’ll represent you as a producer, but you can't sing.” I went through this period of self-doubt.

When exactly did you rediscover your voice?

People that got soul like Raphael Saadiq and my homeboy, Joey Brown, a rapper. It’s like these two different worlds. You’ve got these crooners that took over, I don't know if they were birthed from Michael Jackson where you got these males that sing really high and they could do all these runs. But then you’ve got the soul singer type of dudes that sing like the Stylistics and Bobby Womack. I was trying to be like the crooners. Raphael was like, “You got style to your voice. You’re a style singer like a D’Angelo; your voice is unique.” And then he kept giving me more confidence and I started leaning into my strengths as a singer and not being worried about that other world. I can't sing. I tell you right now: I'm not those other types of guys that sing like that. It's not my bag and I had to realize that.

You obviously came of age well after the commercial peak of the music you make today. Did you ever feel pressure to jump into other genres?

Yeah. In the beginning I was getting pulled in so many directions. I think I started out with the, I came from the church, so I started out with the sofa vibes. I was a big fan of D'Angelo and Raphael Saadiq. And then when I started working with Timbaland, I started becoming a fan of the way he did things. And then I just started wherever the industry was going, that's where I was going. And then there was this one time I wasn't getting placements.

And that’s when you decided to begin transitioning your sound?

I got my own studio and I started getting into recording and I made a decision to stop chasing what everybody was doing with a laptop and become the ultimate musician. I was like, “I'm a musician first. Let me do something that everybody else can't do and this would be my superpower.”

The industry changed. I'm pretty sure it's a gang of people out here and producers that deal with this right now is that you come in [the studio] like, I made this dope track and they'd be like, “Nah, we need something like Lady Gaga, Beyoncé with a little Ariana Grande.” And now you’re just making stuff that you think people like. I wasn't even really tapping in all the way into my artistry. I was just trying to get a placement. I was chasing a hit, and so my style was all over the place.

You channeled a retro spirit with this album. I love “Some People.” The themes of that song and others feel timeless and universal. How do you put yourself in a space to write lyrics like those?

I give all glory and honor to Jesus Christ in my life. I always took God everywhere I went my whole life. That's how I was brought up, even through the bad. I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I do acknowledge him. And I've always tried, I'm very sensitive to, I don't like haters. I don't like black on black crime. I don't like all that music that poisons our children. So for me when I was writing [“Some People”], it was that I feel like we are lacking communication. We don't communicate with each other no more.

It could be just because of the economy, or because we’re spread out, or because we’re gentrified. There’s no more communities. A lot of destruction happened from people just not communicating. We’re not making friends, we’re not helping each other, we not teaching each other. You can't even tell nobody nothing. Everybody knows everything. So I just wanted to write a song and I wanted to pay homage to Curtis Mayfield. And I feel like that's who he was and that's what he represented. And we need to hear that.