Meet the Philly-born producer behind Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, and Kehlani hits

Pop Wansel is on the move. The Philadelphia hip-hop and pop producer is on the phone from Los Angeles as he makes his way across town from his home to his recording studio.

“Can you hear me?” the 34-year-old songwriter asks. “I’m in the back of an Uber so I’m wearing my mask.”

Yes, you’re coming through loud and clear. The first question: What are you working on?

The answer to that query: It’s complicated.

Wansel is perfectly willing to talk about his love of making music.

That could mean recalling making beats while hanging out after school in the 1990s at the Philadelphia International Records office of his producer-arranger father, Dexter Wansel, known for his work with Patti LaBelle and Teddy Pendergrass.

Or it could be remembering how he cold-contacted a young rapper named Nicki Minaj on MySpace in 2006, and the Annie Lennox-sampling song “Your Love” wound up scoring Minaj her first No. 1 hit.

Before that, Wansel — who loves to cook as much as he loves to write songs — was planning on going to culinary school. Instead, the music business beckoned.

These days, he’s so successful he needs to be coy about what he’s up to. Because in the pop music stratosphere, secrecy is valued.

“I’m working on a few things,” he says. “I can tell you it’s big, and I can tell you that the world probably knows that this person and I are working together. But I can’t tell you on what.”

That sounds like Lizzo, whose Special — the follow-up to her 2019 Cuz I Love You — is due Friday.Wansel, whose given name is Andrew, has songwriter and producer credits on “Grrrls,” the second Special single, which uses a Beastie Boys sample to advance an empowerment message.

Wansel won’t confirm or deny. “You could be right, or you could be wrong,” he says, though he does acknowledge he’s contributed to “a few” Special songs.

In the last decade, Wansel and his production partner Warren “Oak” Felder have built a lengthy resume. Together they’ve teamed with Usher, Ariana Grande, Rihanna, Miguel, Alicia Keys, Demi Lovato, and Elle Varner, with Dexter Wansel aiding with arrangements on the latter’s 2012 Perfectly Imperfect.

And Pop Wansel is in the spotlight now because of the acclaimed new album by hip-hop/R&B singer Kehlani, who plays the Skyline Stage at the Mann Center on Aug. 15.

Wansel and Felder worked with Kehlani on 2017′s SweetSexySavage, and Wansel took the reins on Blue Water Road, executive producing and coproducing all 13 tracks.

He shaped the inviting sound with airy folk and old-school R&B touches as well as the delicate strings he grew to appreciate as the youngest of eight children in the house of his classically trained cellist father.

Blue Water Road is an emotionally rich record, growing out of songs that Kehlani originally recorded for a deluxe version of her 2020 album It Was Good Until It Wasn’t. With Wansel’s aid, it became a full-length work.

“We have made so much music over the years,” Kehlani wrote on Instagram in an effusive thank you to Wansel in April. “Long before this album I trusted you with my life. … I am forever in awe of your God given talent, your warm & selfless Taurus heart, & your ability to make everyone around you better. Their BEST. Thank you for doing this with me.”

Wansel’s path to becoming an A-list producer begins with his father, his family, and Philadelphia.

Dexter Wansel “wasn’t just a cool dad,” he says. “He was the coolest. Just really mild-mannered and patient and uncompromising.”

He recalls a life-changing moment: A Michael Jackson fan at age 6, Wansel realized Nas was rapping over “Human Nature” on his 1994 song “It Ain’t Hard to Tell.”

“I was like, ‘Wow, this is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.’ But I didn’t understand it. So my father sat me down and showed me what a sample was. And it was in that moment when I was like, ‘OK, this is what I’m going to do.’ ”

“He started very early,” says Dexter Wansel, speaking on the phone from his home in Chester County. “By the time he was 15, he was on his way.”

“I was selling beats to rappers in the neighborhood when I was 10 years old,” Pops Wansel recalls. “I would make cassettes or CDs and just sell them for $200.”

Wansel got an education from his sisters and brothers. “Having seven siblings in the crib,” he says. “Everybody had different tastes,” ranging from Prince and David Bowie to gospel music to West Coast rap. His mother, Judith, listened to doo-wop and classic soul. His father spun classical and jazz LPs.

Dexter Wansel had also been an early starter. “From the age of 8 in 1958 and ‘59, I was a backstage errand boy at the Uptown Theater,” on North Broad Street, he says. A number of artists he met at the Uptown — including Jerry Butler and LaBelle — the elder Wansel went on to work with at PIR.

He passed a behind-the-scenes perspective on to his son.

“The people I worked with were like family members to him. Lou Rawls was Uncle Lou. Patti LaBelle was Aunt Patti, Phyllis Hyman was Aunt Phyllis. Billy Paul was Uncle Billy. He got to see them in action.”

Dexter Wansel got his son started on piano lessons “two or three different times,” Pop remembers. “I just never had the attention span.”

“But I’m so inspired by the era that my dad thrived in,” Pop Wansel says. “The real music, the real instruments. You cannot beat that feeling. … Just being in Philadelphia, having good soul music in my genes, and having access to the best musicians in the world.”

Wansel was inspired to become “Pop” by the 2005 horror movie The Skeleton Key. “This character Papa Justify would take souls. I was like, ‘I take soul samples! I’m gonna be Papa Jusitfy.’ ”

Dexter Wansel still performs regularly and put out an album called The Story of the Flight Crew to Mars in 2021 that works as a bookend to his 1973 Philadelphia International album Life on Mars. He says he’s most impressed by “the sonics” of his son’s production. “When he writes a song, he tries to send a message. But primarily as a producer, I hear the quality of the sounds he gets out of the instrumentation. It’s amazing.”

Pop Wansel is grateful his father “taught me about the mistakes he made on the business side. He gave me everything I need to know to make sure I’m not taken advantage of.”

Wansel, who calls himself “very private,” lives with his girlfriend and sons Hendrix, 11, and Ziggy, 4 in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles, where he moved in 2017. “They’re Angelenos,” he says of his sons. What he misses most about Philadelphia is “the food. The variety of culture. Philadelphia is such a great city for Caribbean food, Jamaican food, Puerto Rican food. I can’t find none of that in L.A.”

And: cheesesteaks. “I’m a Dalessandro’s boy. Also right across the street, there’s Chubby’s. Respectfully, there are a lot of places that do cheesesteaks, but there’s nothing like that out here.”

Wansel raves about teenage singer Ally Salort from North Jersey, who he’s been working with. And on his wish list? “I’d love to work with Adele. And Pusha T. He’s my favorite rapper.”

Being perceived as hot — as he is with Blue Water Road and Lizzo music about to drop — is nice. But not a priority.

“I feel like I’m right where I’m supposed to be,” he says. “How do I explain it? I got my first check from a label for producing in 2009. So it’s 13 years later and I’m still doing this. Probably 95% of producers don’t have that lifespan. So I don’t really get into the ‘who’s hot right now?’ I’m just here to serve the artist and serve the people, and give them the music they like.”