Man-Child in the Promised Land

At six-foot-three and at least 260 pounds, with mahogany-dark skin, Sean King­ston looks more like late rapper Notorious B.I.G. than any prefab American teen idol. Kingston also shares some of Biggie Smalls' charisma, Jamaican heritage, and quick, lyrical wit. Now he's in the running to portray Smalls in a planned Hollywood biopic, along with Compton rapper Guerilla Black. Kingston, who has read for the part, says he's honored to be considered. Before he got noticed for his Caribbean crooning, rappers like Biggie and Jay-Z were big influences.

"In the early days, he was a serious freestyler," says friend Raheem "Hype King" Robinson. "He loved to just rap, rap, rap. He wasn't into the reggae chanting or the singing he's doing now. It was more Jay-Z-type, the Biggie or Nas feel. He could rap about your shoes or girls or whatever you told him to, right on the spot... It was crazy to see a little boy doing that. Even back then, everyone knew he would be a star... It was like, damn, how old is this dude?"

At the time, he was 12.

Robinson, who frequently works and travels with Kingston, was his childhood buddy. They met in Miami at Bayfront Park, at a reggae festival, and quickly bonded through their love of music. They started performing as a duo, with Robinson making beats in his dad's home studio and Kingston rapping over them. "We'd be at talent shows around the neighborhood," Robinson says. "The USA Flea Market on 79th Street, the SeaEscape cruises. We performed at concerts together in parks around North Miami Beach, block parties. It was all small stuff, but it was a start."

"By the time I was 13, I used to do whatever little promotions I could," King­ston says. "I'd go to the barbershop, and if it would say there was gonna be a talent show here or there, I'd just call up and register myself. The highest I ever got was second place. I thought that was pretty dope."

Kingston started making demos when he was at Congress Middle School. He'd sell them to other students while Robinson pushed his music late at night on South Beach.

It was around this time that little Sean chanced upon hip-hop producer Lil Jon outside of a Miami nightclub. "He saw Lil Jon and walked right up to him and gave him his demo, all excited," Turner recalls during an interview at her new Sunrise home. "Lil Jon shook his hand and said he'd listen to it. Then, when Kisean turned his back, he threw it right on the ground. He thought it was funny. But Kisean saw him... He came home so upset, like, 'Ma, I'm gon' be better than Lil Jon one day.'

"He was embarrassed, but things like that keep you going."

Kingston was honing his skills. Not many were paying him much attention. He was just a big, hyper kid with big talk. And then, one day in 2005, MySpace changed everything.

Kingston posted his first songs there when he was 14. He emailed every producer he could find online — Dr. Dre, Swizz Beatz, Polow Da Don — begging them to listen. None replied. Then he hit up Jonathan "J.R." Rotem. In Los Angeles, the South African-born Rotem is known as a superproducer who's worked with A-list artists such as Rihanna, 50 Cent, and even Britney Spears, with whom he was briefly rumored to be romantically involved.

"I basically hit him up eight times a day for, like, three weeks and was like, 'Listen to my music, listen to my music,' " Kingston recalls. "I wasn't taking no for an answer...

"When J.R. finally listened to my music, he was ready to work. He gave me his number. I called him, we chopped it up, and he flew me out to L.A."

Rotem remembers it a bit differently. "I don't actually manage my own MySpace," he says by phone from California. "It was actually my younger brother Tommy that was doing it. Tommy was the one going back and forth working with him and sending him tracks and giving him a chance to show what he's got. I'm in the studio working with the who's who of the music industry. I don't have time to do MySpace. It takes a lot for someone to be able to make me shift my focus from working with established artists to helping a developing artist... but Sean had it."

At the time, Rotem was launching his Beluga Heights label and seeking artists to sign. "We weren't looking for anything specific," he says. "It just needed to be something that was very, very different. In Sean's case, he was young, had amazing presence, there was a Jamaican influence... he was just the essence of raw talent."

Rotem's success depends in part on his being a tastemaker, someone who can anticipate or even create trends. Pop music with Caribbean flair is all over the charts right now, thanks to the success of King­ston, Rihanna, Kat De Luna, and others, but its appeal wasn't as obvious three years ago, when producers like Rotem bet on it.

At the time, Kingston thought he was on the verge of hip-hop stardom. "He was concentrating more on rapping when we first met him," Rotem says, "but he was also singing his own hooks. We didn't just want a rapper that could spit 16 bars but someone who could write his own hooks, had melodic sensibility, crossover appeal, and with the Jamaican vibe. We knew Sean was the one."

Kingston was 15. He got on a plane to L.A. Just a few months before, he'd been briefly homeless, sleeping in cars or any couch he could scrounge up among friends in Miami, unsure where his next meal was coming from. Federal agents had kept Turner under surveillance for some time, culminating in her arrest. Kingston's sister Kanema Morris was charged in connection with her mother's crimes, for conspiracy. Kingston was too young to have had full knowledge of his mother's criminal activities, she says, but it was still a pivotal time for him.

Turner spent two and a half years in a low-security federal prison in Tallahassee, having been sent away just before Kingston's 15th birthday. "We lost everything," Turner says. "We lost our home, my cars, businesses... the federal government took everything. Sean went to stay with family members, but he was so unruly that he left and went off on his own."

It was hard, Kingston says. "I was angry at the whole situation, and it was just a crazy time... On one hand, it made me more focused, but it also felt like everything was falling apart."

Meanwhile, Kingston's sister, Morris, who was originally sentenced to probation, was cited for failing to answer her phone while under court-ordered monitoring and was jailed for four months.

By the time Rotem's organization was emailing him beats to work with, Kingston knew this was his chance to save his family, maybe the only one he'd get. He already had an older brother, Kurt Morris, on the West Coast, taking classes in Los Angeles. Relocating there made sense to him. And there was Rotem, who became a mentor.

Rotem recalls that Kingston improved quickly once they started working together in a studio. "He was singing more on pitch, working on timber, and writing songs a lot faster... When you're that young, you learn a lot quicker. He's real quick in the studio. He knows what kind of sound to go for."

In early 2007, Epic Records took an interest in Rotem's protégé, signing Kingston to a joint contract with Rotem and advancing him enough money that he felt like a star for the first time. Kingston was 16.

Then "Beautiful Girls" began to get radio play, starting with Los Angeles station Power 106, and it didn't stop.

"I never knew it could happen so fast," Kingston says now. "It was amazing to me how big that song got."

Epic saw its opening and pushed to quickly get an album's worth of material from Kingston. Rotem had a month to help him do it.

"The single was taking off so quick, like way quicker than we expected, and we had to play catch-up," Rotem says. "Every day, we were making music together from afternoon until morning. We changed songs, verses, and hooks."

Listening to Kingston's self-titled debut album is like a walk through the mind of a 17-year-old with a lot to prove. What makes it stand out, however, is Kingston's fluidity, the way, with Rotem's help, he moves smoothly in and out of genres, creating an overall stew of reggae, pop, hip-hop, and doo-wop that remains crisp enough to appeal to 7-year-olds and 27-year-olds alike.