Charles Farrar

The Characters were a Grammy Award-winning American songwriting and production duo best known for their work with 1990s R&B vocal groups such as Boyz II Men, Destiny's Child, and Riff.[5] The pairing was formed when Troy Taylor, signed in early 1990 to a solo record deal with Motown, decided to instead explore songwriting and production for other artists with fellow songwriter and producer Farrar.[6][7] After commencing work with Farrar, two of the songs originally created for Taylor's debut album were repurposed and placed onto Boyz II Men's acclaimed debut project Cooleyhighharmony.[8] They would reunite with the group to create "Jezzebel" for 1994's Grammy-winning II album.

Several years later, solo R&B artist Johntá Austin, working with the duo at the time to create his own debut project at the age of 13, was experiencing instability at RCA Records as a result of internal label politics. Austin was added to the writing team as an occasional member when he was subsequently dropped and his project was shelved, and their first writing collaborations as a trio resulted in "Realize" for Jason Weaver, "Here For You" for SWV's 1997 album Release Some Tension and hit single "Sweet Lady" for Tyrese Gibson.[9][10]

Taylor and Farrar also diversified into forming and signing girl groups throughout the 1990s, such as OSCAR (a multi-racial New jack swing/R&B quartet who released 1992 album Spotlight) under their production company Character Music Corporation.[11]

Credits are courtesy of Discogs, Spotify, and AllMusic.