He collects himself in the dressing room and prepares himself for the gig at the local nightclub. Wearing what looks like a solid color Parisian nightsuit, usually all-white or all-black, he carefully straightens his black wig then covers his black frizzy hair, making this man resemble a modern James Brown.

He walks out of the dressing room through the hallway and waits off stage behind the curtains. The nightclub’s announcer informs the audience that they’re in for a real show tonight–a throwback to the music of James Brown and 70s funk and soul, and then introduces “Black Velvet”.

“Black Velvet” is accompanied by a small rhythm and horn section, perhaps even a few female backup vocalists for the night. He copies James Brown’s squeals and dance moves and blows kisses and waves at the audience, who are mostly just “Black Velvet’s” relatives and close friends, given the popularity he has within his own local community–they know him better as 62 year-old Charles Bradley.

Charles Bradley, born in 1948, is part of the revival of old funk, a genre of soul and R&B music from the 1960s and 1970s. With his raspy voice, Bradley sweats and cries, delivering a performance that some critics say resembles soul and funk musicians like James Brown, Al Green and Otis Redding. He gives the most sincere and humble smile to his fans, calling them his brothers and sisters and saying that he loves them.

Daptone Records was formed by musicians Gabriel “Gabe” Roth and Neal Sugarman who built their own studios in Brooklyn, like Daptone’s House of Soul, where they have recorded most of their releases. Apart from Bradley, Daptone has recreated authentic soul and funk sounds with other acts such as Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (Jones was a former correctional officer), Naomi Davis, and The Sugarman 3. In February of 2009, Daptone Records was burglarized and many instruments and studio engineering equipment were stolen.

Bradley has released over a dozen singles since 2002 through Daptone Records. His debut studio album, No Time For Dreaming (2011), describes his personal struggles to thrive in America as a blue collar worker, with tracks such as “Why Is It So Hard” and “Heartaches and Pain”. His critique on how destructive our existence has become is heard on “The World (Is Going Up in Flames)”.

This world / Is going up in flames / And Nobody / Wanna take the blame / Don’t tell me / How to live my life / When you / Never felt the pain

Bradley released his second studio album, Victim of Love, in 2013, with hits such as “You Put the Flame On It”. Despite Bradley’s James Brown impersonation as Black Velvet, a Rolling Stone review on Bradley’s second LP titled Victim of Love commented that Bradley “sounds like an heir, not an impersonator.”

Bradley’s songs have often been sampled by famous hip-hop artists such as Jay-Z and Asher Roth. Bradley even provided the singing voice of Minstrel Krampus in the American Dad! Bradley is accompanied by the Menahan Street Band, providing horns, percussion, backing vocals, vibes, and rhythm guitar that help spice his smooth vocals. Along with Jay-Z, artists such as Kid Cudi and 50 Cent have sampled independent tracks from The Menahan Street Band.

However, the most remarkable part of Bradley’s music is the significant hardships behind the context of his songs. He has faced sickness, homelessness, living in the projects, and experiencing family tragedies–and yet still holds a positive outlook on life.

For example, Bradley’s home, prior to the release of No Time for Dreaming, was a Hylan Housing Development on 131 Moore Street in Brooklyn, New York. The front sidewalk is littered with plastic bags and aluminum cans, with a dilapidated red couch for a public bench. Upon entering, the ground floor lobby is marked with graffiti tags with a sign for all Hylan Tenants:

It’s a shame that we: Mark, spit, urinate, vomit, defecate, throw candy wrappers, beer and soda cans on elevators and stairwells…allow children and friends to annoy our neighbors by running up and down stairwells, throwing eggs and ringing doorbells.

For the purpose of securing his mother from illness or physical collapse due to her old age, Bradley lives in his Hylan home with his mother and his parrot, the house pet. Bradley’s mother has suffered multiple heart attacks and strokes over the course of her life and requires Bradley’s help every minute. They live in the projects, where lots of gang and drug related violence occurs. Bradley is grateful for having a roof over his head at least. When he is with his mother and his house door is locked, he is “at peace”. However, just going out to the elevator to go outside into the projects is scary and dangerous.

Concerning Bradley’s mother, she was nonexistent for a short time in Bradley’s childhood. Bradley was raised by his maternal grandmother in Gainesville, Florida; his mother had abandoned him at 8 months of age to find a sustainable job and income in New York. Bradley was fatherless and looked up to his grandmother as his true parent because he felt he was “treated fairly” by his grandmother.

When his biological mother returned for Bradley, he did not recognize her. “All I remember is that I was raised up in Florida and that I was about eight when my Mom came to Florida and said she wanted to take me back to New York with her. I didn’t know who she was.”

The home that Bradley and his siblings traveled to was a “basement, where you couldn’t see nothing but dirt and sand,” Bradley said, having only a small bed on the floor. There were a lot of hardships in Bradley’s family when they lived in New York. Feeling like the “black sheep” of the family, he ran away and began living on the subway trains.

As a result of Bradley’s poverty, prompting him to rather be homeless, he slept on the benches of subway trains until a police officer would kick him out; Bradley would then simply hop on to another train to rest for as long as he could until he was kicked out by another police officer.

Similarly to never returning home, he never attended school and at 62-years-old has a reading comprehension level of a first grader. As of now, a tutor visits Bradley to help him build his reading and writing skills, embodying his self-making man or improvement of oneself sentiment.

He never turned to drugs to numb his emotional pain. Even though his friends were using heroin, he managed to stay away from hard drugs and alcohol, because he was always “afraid of needles”. A drug he did find to medicate his heartache was singing. His sister took him to a James Brown concert at the Apollo Theatre when he was 14. “He had those strobe lights and effect lights on him and I said ‘oh my god, I want to be like that’,” Bradley said.

To escape the projects, Bradley’s sister forged their mother’s signature to join the Job Corps. “That job really helped me get out of the ghetto and really know people for who they are, not for their creed and color,” Bradley said. Job Corps had Bradley travel all across America and at 18, he began singing to girls in the Job Corps “doing James Brown,” Bradley said.

At first, Bradley had severe stage fright. Eventually, he overcame his fear when a friend of his pushed him on the stage with a live band, forcing him to play a few songs like he was a reincarnation of James Brown.

As a young adult, Bradley struggled with the social structure of America, repeatedly bouncing back and forth between the Job Corps, unemployment and welfare. He ended up at California and was in and out of hospitals with a fever, to which he returned back to New York by the plea of his mother.

The hospital treated Bradley with penicillin, not knowing that Bradley was severely allergic to the drug. Bradley was “sick as a dog” and thought he was going to die when the hospital staff gave up on reversing the allergic reaction. When his chances of survival were looking bleak and hopeless, Bradley’s brother, Joseph, visited him and gave him a kiss on the cheek saying, “Charles if you don’t want to live for yourself, live for me. I love you.”

Bradley fought through his sickness and after he left the hospital, his brother was killed outside of his house by a gunshot. Charles woke up one morning to find his mother in a complete distraught mess. Both Bradley’s home and Joseph’s home rest on the same block in a close proximity. Bradley looked out the window to see that there were red and blue flashes from police squad cars and ambulances.

Bradley splashed water from the bathroom onto his face and rushed downstairs. His mother screamed, “Charles! Charles! Charles! Joe got shot! He is dead!” Bradley muted out the word “dead” from his mother’s cry and prayed in his mind, to God, that Joseph had been wounded in the arm or leg perhaps; sadly though his prayers weren’t answered for Joseph’s life. He fell to the floor, crying.

Thinking this was all just a bad nightmare, he ran upstairs to his bedroom and prayed to God that he would do better if this wasn’t true. He looked out the window again and saw MORGUE on one of the vehicles outside. He rushed back to his brother’s house to be blocked by a police detective, asking Bradley to leave and not see his brother due to the bloody mess that was inside.

“I wanted to die. I wanted to leave this world. I could not take the pain. I loved my brother so much,” Bradley said. When Bradley and his brother were young children, they once played a game to see who could collect the most pennies on the street block. Now, when Bradley goes to Joseph’s gravesite, he throws pennies on his grave. “Every time I see a penny, it reminds me of Joe, it tears my heart out.”

For the rest of his life, Bradley tried to pursue a career in music; but was never able to support himself financially. While performing as “Black Velvet”, he was discovered by Gabriel Roth of Daptone Records. Roth invited Bradley over to a rehearsal; Bradley asked that the band simply perform while he improvised lyrics on the spot. He transcribed the emotional whirlwind of his brother’s death into the song “Heartaches and Pain”

In the spring of 2012, Bradley was documented in the film Soul of America, discussing his music and his entire life dealing with his impoverished lifestyle and his struggle to prosper under those circumstances.

No amount of money can take away his love for God and his love for others, and that no matter what, Bradley will look forward, doing no harm to others and will remain honest and a genuine human being.

Bradley has become a worldwide and critical sensation. Rolling Stone declared No Time for Dreaming as one of the best albums of 2011. Following the album’s success, he played over 110 shows in 17 countries across 3 continents.

His hopes and dreams for the future are to sustain and secure himself in music, to move out of the projects, and find a better home for himself.