Tyrese told BET.com that this project is his best work to date.

“It’s my proudest album to date,” Tyrese confessed. “I know everybody says that about their albums, but when the fans finally get a hold of the music and they listen to it and put their heads and hearts and spirits around it, trust me when I tell you this album will not let you down.”

In his absence from music he has since released a bestselling book, How to Get Out of Your Own Way, and enjoyed huge success at the box office starring in the latest installments of blockbuster films Fast Five and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

The Watts, California native says his break from the music world was well warranted.

“I don’t have to do music to pay my bills,” he explains. “A lot of artists are out here pumping out these albums and they’re dropping one every year and the motivation for some is ‘I got to pay these bills’, which is understandable, but the fact that I was able to take my time and do this and I wasn’t motivated by the money, I feel like that’s why this is my best album.”

Opting to release his latest opus independently via Voltron Records, the seasoned actor/singer says a more hands-on approach was needed this time around. Joining the seemingly endless list of artists who’ve taken their brand and hardcore following of fans on the independent route, Tyrese admits the decision was solely based on not wanting to deal with the political crossfire that some artists succumb to when dealing with major labels.

“I walked away from the music for various reasons: politics, drama, various different opinions and things that went down on my last album run that made me walk away from it,” Tyrese admits.

Moving independent hasn’t prevented the R&B crooner from enlisting the help of industry A-listers T.I. Rick Ross, R. Kelly and newcomer Jay Rock.

Happy to be back and with renewed energy, Tyrese has no plans on slowing up his Hollywood takeover. The much-anticipated Teddy Pendergrass biopic, in which he’ll portray the late R&B legend, is also in the works.

“It’s in motion, man, and we’re just excited to be working directly with the [Pendergrass] family,” Tyrese admits. “He took me under his wing during the last three or four years of his life and we bonded and connected.

While the biopic is still in the pre-production stages, Tyrese says he’s fully prepared to deliver one of the best performances of his career, thanks to spending plenty of time with Pendergrass before the music legend passed in January 2010.

“He let me in on a lot of secrets, a lot of insight and information on his story,” Tyrese recalls. “Where he came from and the different challenges and obstacles that he had to overcome, and I’m going to hold on to all of that and you’ll see it show up on camera.”

Take a listen:

Tyrese Gets His Christmas Wish, Spends Time With Daughter [VIDEO]

VIDEO: Tyrese Pays Tribute To Teddy Pendergrass

Thousands gathered in Philadelphia on Saturday to pay their respects to the late, great Teddy Pendergrass. 

From The Philadelphia Inquirer

Soul singer Teddy Pendergrass’ funeral Saturday was the kind of soaring ceremony that punctuates the end of a larger-than-large life.

A 200-member gospel choir jubilated with high-decibel exhultation, while a band and a sternum-vibrating organ roused the estimated 4,000 people who filled mammoth Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church on Cheltenham Avenue, the biggest African American church in Philadelphia.

In turn, singers Melba Moore, Tyrese Gibson, Bunny Sigler, Gerald Austin, Lyfe Jennings, and Musiq performed songs by Pendergrass, a brawny, seductive baritone who leavened an incandescent sexuality with just enough sensitivity to stir arenas full of women and heat any room in which his music played.

Soul Legend Teddy Pendergrass Dead At 59

“He sounded like hot fudge on cherry vanilla ice cream with all the toppings,” remembered friend and neighbor Dyana Williams, a personality on WRNB-FM (107.9), in an interview last week. “He was delicious, an auditory and visual pleasure – the love man.”

Pendergrass, 59, raised in North Philadelphia and a member of Enon, died Jan. 13 of a protracted illness that followed a diagnosis of colon cancer last year.

Read the rest of the Inquirer’s article here.

Teddy Pendergrass’ Music Lives On Through Sampling

VIDEO: Teddy Pendergrass’ “Teddy Jeans” Commercial

Fans of the late soul singer Teddy Pendergrass will have a chance to say their goodbyes at a public viewing in Philadelphia.

Soul Legend Teddy Pendergrass Dead At 59

The viewing will be held Friday, Jan. 22 at 10 a.m. at Philadelphia’s Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, located at 2800 West Cheltenham Ave. A funeral will be held the next day on Saturday, Jan. 23 at 10 a.m. at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church. Burial will follow at West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, PA.

Teddy Pendergrass’ Music Lives On Through Sampling

VIDEO: Teddy Pendergrass’ “Teddy Jeans” Commercial

Before Jay-Z had Roc-A-Wear or Nelly had Applebottoms, Teddy Pendergrass had Teddy Jeans. Watch this rare commercial from the early 80’s advertising Teddy Pendergrass’ line of designer jeans for women, Teddy Jeans.

Soul Legend Teddy Pendergrass Dead At 59

Teddy Pendergrass’ Music Lives On Through Sampling

Today we honor R&B Singer Teddy Pendergrass who died at age 59 due to a rare illness related to paralysis that surfaced in 1982 following a car accident.

Teddy Pendergrass started singing gospel music in Philadelphia churches, becoming an ordained minister at ten years old. While attending public school, he sang in the city-wide McIntyre Elementary School Choir and in the All-City Stetson Junior High School Choir. A self-taught drummer, Pendergrass had a teen pop vocal group when he was 15.

By his late teens, Pendergrass was a drummer for local vocal group the Cadillacs. In the late ’60s, the Cadillacs merged with another more-established group, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. In 1970, when the Blue Notes broke up, Melvin, now aware of Pendergrass’ vocal prowess, asked him to take the lead singer spot. Teddy went on to receive several Grammy nominations during 1977 and 1978, -Billboard’s 1977 Pop Album New Artist Award, an American Music Award for best R&B performer of 1978, and awards from -Ebony magazine and the NAACP. He was also in consideration for the lead in the movie biopic The Otis Redding Story. The ’70s ended, but Pendergrass kept racking up the hits. TP, his fifth solo album, went platinum in the summer of 1980 off the singles “Turn Off the Lights,” “Come Go with Me,” “Shout and Scream,” “It’s You I Love,” and “Can’t We Try.” It’s Time for Love gave Pendergrass another gold album in summer 1981, which included the hit singles “Love TKO” and “I Can’t Live Without Your Love.”

In 1985, he made a surprise appearance at Live Aid in Philadelphia. In 1998, he released his biography ‘Truly Blessed’ and then in 2006 retired from the music industry.

Here are our favorite Top 5 Teddy Pendergrass songs:

“Love TKO”

“When Somebody Loves You Back”

“Turn Off The Lights”

“Close The Door”

“The Whole Town’s Laughing At Me”

Read the latest on the soul singer’s life and death, and be sure to scroll all the way down to check out photos, videos, and links to more coverage.

NEW YORK – R&B singer Teddy Pendergrass, who had been one of the most electric and successful figures in music until a car crash 28 years ago left him in a wheelchair, has died of colon cancer. He was 59.

Before the crash, Pendergrass established a new era of R&B with an explosive, raw voice that symbolized masculinity, passion and the joys and sorrow of romance in songs such as “Close the Door,” “It Don’t Hurt Now,” “Love T.K.O.” and other hits that have since become classics.

He was an international superstar and sex symbol. His career was at its apex — and still climbing.

MORE TEDDY LINKS:

• Top Five Teddy Love Songs
• Top Hip-Hop Samples of Teddy

Friend and longtime collaborator Kenny Gamble, of the renowned production duo Gamble & Huff, teamed with Pendergrass on his biggest hits and recalled how the singer was even working on a movie.

“He had about 10 platinum albums in a row, so he was a very, very successful recording artist and as a performing artist,” Gamble said Thursday. “He had a tremendous career ahead of him, and the accident sort of got in the way of many of those plans.”

Pendergrass, who was born in Philadelphia in 1950, suffered a spinal cord injury in a 1982 car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down — still able to sing but without his signature power. The image of the strong, virile lover was replaced with one that drew sympathy.

But instead of becoming bitter or depressed, Pendergrass created a new identity — that as a role model, Gamble said.

“He never showed me that he was angry at all about his accident,” Gamble said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “In fact, he was very courageous.”

Pendergrass died Wednesday in suburban Philadelphia, where he had been hospitalized for months.

The singer’s son, Teddy Pendergrass II, said his father underwent colon cancer surgery eight months ago and had “a difficult recovery.”

“To all his fans who loved his music, thank you,” his son said. “He will live on through his music.”

Pendergrass left a remarkable imprint on the music world as he ushered in a new era in R&B with his fiery, sensual and forceful brand of soul and his ladies’ man image, burnished by his strikingly handsome looks.

Gamble said Pendergrass was one of a kind as an artist and boasted a powerful voice and “a great magnetism.”

“He was a great baritone singer, and he had a real smooth sound, but he had a real rough sound, too, when he wanted to exert power in his voice,” Gamble said.

But it wasn’t Pendergrass’ voice that got him his break in the music business — it was his drum playing abilities. He met Harold Melvin, who was looking for replacement members for his group, the Blue Notes, and signed on to be the drummer. Later, he became the lead singer of the group, which became known as Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes.

The band started working with Gamble and Leon Huff and had signature hits in the early 1970s with “Wake Up Everybody” and “If You Don’t Know Me by Now.”

But Pendergrass had creative differences with Melvin and soon left for a solo career, according to his Web site. It was then he would become a sex symbol for the R&B genre, working women into a frenzy with hits such as “Only You” and concerts dedicated for ladies only.

“The females,” Gamble said, “loved Teddy Pendergrass. The females were very attracted to him and his music.”

Unlike the songs of many of today’s male R&B crooners, Pendergrass’ music bordered on eroticism without explicit lyrics or coarse language — just through the raw emotion in his voice. “Turn Off the Lights” was a tune that perhaps best represented the many moods of Pendergrass — tender and coaxing yet strong as the song reaches its climax.

Fans were devastated when, at age 31, Pendergrass was critically injured after his Rolls-Royce hit a tree. He spent six months in a hospital and returned to recording the next year with the album “Love Language.”

Teddy Pendergrass Interview

He continued to sing and recorded several albums, receiving Grammy nominations; perhaps his best-known hit after his crash was the inspirational song “Life is a Song Worth Singing.”

It was 19 years before Pendergrass resumed performing at his own concerts. He made his return on Memorial Day weekend in 2001, with two sold-out shows in Atlantic City, N.J.

Gamble noted Pendergrass’ charitable work for people with spinal cord injuries, his performances despite pain and his focus on the positive in the face of great challenges.

“He used to say something in his act in the wheelchair, ‘Don’t let the wheelchair fool you,’ because he still proclaimed he was a lover,” Gamble said.

But his career was never the same. Gamble said it was difficult for Pendergrass to project vocally like he once did: “The breathing aspect of it, he wasn’t really able to deal with it.”

And while he had albums, he was no longer seen as the sex symbol but more of a sympathetic, tragic figure, even though he still had a strong following among his core female fans.

After the accident, he dedicated much of his life to helping others with spinal cord injuries and founded the Teddy Pendergrass Alliance to do just that. Gamble said he wanted to help others.

“In his quiet moments, he probably did a lot of reflection. But I never saw him pity himself. He stayed busy,” Gamble said. “(But) I feel that he’s in a better place now. … He doesn’t have to go through that pain or whatever he was going through anymore.”

Producers Gamble & Huff Reminisce About Teddy