The current, separate iteration of the band UB40, which Wilson left in 2013, also confirmed the singer’s death.
UB40 formed in Birmingham, England in the late 1970s, when reggae was becoming an outlet for the country’s working class youth to express issues of racism and poverty.
“I went through the same rigmarole as most black people in the late 70s,” Wilson told The Guardian in an interview in May, referencing the era’s stop-and-frisk “sus law,” which often unfairly targeted men of color.
The four time Grammy-nominated band topped the U.K.