Back in the day, before we had our Redbox and Hulu streaming services we often had to drive to a physical store to rent movies from ‘Blockbuster’; we would watch movies like the Terminator take out the T1000 in the ‘Terminator 2’ movie, we laughed our heads off watching ‘In ‘Living Color’ on television and marveled at Whitney Houston’s amazing vocals of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ during the Super Bowl halftime show. I also remember growing up with two older sisters that loved watching and listening to R&B boy and girl-bands. We would often hear my oldest sister blasting music of ‘Boys II Men’ and ‘Destiny’s Child’, while my younger sister blasts the ‘Back Street Boys’ and ‘NSYNC.’ We also grew up in a time when comedians ran the airways. My parents loved to listen to ‘Tom Joyner’ on the radio while they drove us to school and that’s when I discovered soulful acts like Berry White, Al Greene, and the Isley Brother’s but I later discovered a sub-genre of R&B which is called Neo-soul; there were acts such as ‘Mary J. Blige’, ‘Maxwell’ and ‘Mint Condition’ that forever changed the game of R&B music.
Before the successes of Mint Condition and Stokely’s solo career, Stokley Williams was just an ordinary child from St. Paul, Minnesota. Stokely was born on July 15, 1967. Stokely grew up with both parents that were educators. Stokley’s father taught African American studies but there is not much information about what his mother taught or if Stokely had any siblings. Stokely is currently married to Sylvia Williams and together they have two children but there is little known about their lives outside of the limelight.
At the age of four, Stokely learned how to play percussion instruments. By the early ’80s, Stokely co-founded Mint Condition that included a handful of his high school friends such as Odell, guitarist, Rick, bassist, Jeff, keyboardist and saxophonist and Stokely himself as the lead drummer and singer. Mint Condition was discovered by two legendary producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who saw them playing in a local showcase. In 1991, with the help of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis Mint Condition’s debut album was released and titled ‘Meant to Be; this great album gave us hit singles like, ‘Breaking My Heart’ and ‘Yo Send Me Swinging’ just to name a few. Mint Condition continued releasing a slew of material from the early ’90s and well into the twenty-first century; they continued touring around the world but Stokely started getting a lot of buzz from other great artists such as Prince and even was nominated in the Grammy’s category of Best R&B Performance for his 2011 duet with Kelly Price on ‘Not My Daddy.’ Stokely started gravitating to a few productions and vocals for rappers like ‘Wale’ The Gifted’ and ‘The Album About Nothing.’ In 2017, Stokely made his solo debut album titled ‘Stokely.’ Today Stokely continues to tour the world and still stuns his fans with his new records and collaborations but due to the events of the pandemic he is not touring. Stokely still finds the time to stay in touch with his fans by streaming his favorite genres of music on ‘Twitch’ called ‘Woke With Stoke.’
Stokely Williams grew up in a household that was driven, talented but most importantly disciplined. He was destined for stardom the day he picked up the drums. He set out for his music career and he decided to bring along his friends. Stokely’s dream enabled him to see the world, meet and network with the latest musical talents. He married his best friend and he became a great father. His legacy is to preserve the essence of R&B music for the next generation coming up under him and that’s what it’s all about.
