Most kids grow up worshipping their favorite musicians from afar. Tristan Wilds nearly fell over his idols every time he opened his front door while growing up on Staten Island in the ’90s.
“The Wu-Tang Clan were from my neighborhood, so I used to see them all the time,” the actor/rapper tells The Post. “They would come into my dad’s barber shop to get their hair cut. Raekwon would be giving out $20 bills to the kids. Method Man would be the one telling jokes. RZA was always around, too, and he was the head honcho. Knowing they came from the same neighborhood as me made me think I could do that.”
And he has — with just a little detour along the way. Rather than pursuing rap immediately, Wilds first found his way into a fruitful acting career. By age 17, he’d landed a role as the brooding Michael Lee in “The Wire.” More recently, his part as Dixon Wilson helped make a surprising hit out of the latest “90210” series.
Now he’s ready to return to his first love — along with his childhood nickname, Mack Wilds — with his debut album, “New York: A Love Story.”
Out Sept. 30, the concept album lyrically charts a relationship through its first blossoming to its traumatic end. The tracks find Wilds switching between rapping and singing with ease.
Produced with the help of Ne-Yo, Salaam Remi and Pete Rock, and featuring guest rhymes from his old Wu- Tang neighbors Raekwon and Method Man, Wilds’ album has an unabashedly old-school kick.
“There are a lot of people my age that don’t even know what the classic New York sound is,” says Wilds, who’s also a distant cousin of Jay Z. “This is my attempt to recreate that in some way, but keep my sound fresh at the same time.”
Hot 97 music and assistant programming director Karlie Hustle tells The Post that the station has received “nothing but positivity” about his sound from listeners: “His vocals are legit and his production appeals to both contemporary R&B and diehard hip-hop fans. I’m excited for him.”
As an actor-turned-rapper, the 24-year-old seems happy to concede that comparisons to Drake, Donald Glover and even Jamie Foxx will inevitably be made. But for Wilds, those guys have nothing on Lauryn Hill.
“If I could be like anybody, it would be her,” he says. “She could kill anybody as a rapper when she was in the Fugees. But when ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’ came out, she took it to the next level. She could rap, sing, she could do it all.” T
he Manhattanite admits he has his work cut out for him in convincing hard-core rappers he’s more than a Hollywood softie taking a music vacation.
“My philosophy is always to let the work speak for itself,” he says. “As long as my product is A-plus, people can say whatever they want.”