Charizma

Born Charles Hicks, the MC who would later be known as Charizma was raised in Milpitas, a small suburb north of San Jose. Influenced by golden age hip-hoppers like MC Shan, KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, and Biz Markie, he began rapping in his early teens and soon competed in high school talent shows. In 1989, Hicks was introduced to the older Chris Manak, who was then going by Cut Chris (and later, Peanut Butter Wolf) and making a name for himself as one of the innovators and mainstays on the budding San Jose hip-hop scene. The two clicked instantly, and within a few years Manak dropped work with other projects to focus on Hicks, who was then calling himself Charlie C. Manak and Hicks recorded songs on four-tracks and handed them out to local radio stations and at shows. Their efforts paid off when a San Jose radio DJ heard one of their tracks and asked to manage them.
They accepted, and after a few offers, Charizma and Peanut Butter Wolf, as they were then known, signed to Hollywood BASIC, home to the likes of Organized Konfusion, Raw Fusion, and Lifers Group. Although Charizma and Wolf thought they would get full artistic control, after a year of writing more than an album’s worth of songs, they realized the label had other plans for them. The duo’s track “Red Light Green Light” appeared on a 1993 promotional cassette single shared with Lifers Group, but the deal fell through, and Charizma and Wolf left with their unreleased album Big Shots in hand. Tragically, before the recording could be shopped to other labels, Charizma was shot and killed, the victim of a botched robbery while stopped at a traffic light in East Palo Alto. Peanut Butter Wolf eventually refocused his musical ambition on promoting the talents of others, and in 1996 launched Stones Throw Records with a 12” of his and Charizma’s My World Premiere. Big Shots finally saw the light of day when Stones Throw issued it in 2003. Circa 1990-1993, a deeper archival package consisting of 40 tracks, was released by Stones Throw in 2014. ~ Marisa Brown