Sports are shut down, but there is still room for underdog stories: “She,” a single from the 52-year-old Stokley Williams, quietly leapfrogged two long-running hits, Chris Brown and Drake’s “No Guidance” and Wale and Jeremih’s “On Chill,” to reach Number One at R&B radio on Monday. “No Guidance” and “On Chill” are both platinum-certified juggernauts, major successes from last summer that refuse to go away. Stokley barely eked out a victory after a 29-week climb.
Stokley is hardly an unknown quantity — for decades, he was the lead-singer and drummer in the Minneapolis R&B institution Mint Condition, a group that scored hits with acrobatic ballads like “Breakin’ My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes)” and “What Kind of Man Would I Be?” Still, any sort of commercial success for an artist who breaks solo in his fifties is unlikely. “You have to feel like water off a duck’s back if it doesn’t happen,” Stokley acknowledges. “But sometimes you get it right where you know it should be. I’m just getting some legs on this thing.”
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