Man-Child in the Promised Land

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."

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.

Kingston writes all the lyrics and keeps them clean. There's no profanity, no bragging about girls he's bedded, no attempt to portray grittier street life. "People don't want to hear a kid cursing," he says. "It's unnecessary. And that's not the kind of entertainer I want to be."

The second single off the album, "Me Love," has a patois chorus, poppy production, and an energetic, feel-good appeal that outstrips others' efforts at making reggae-crossover hits. This isn't Sean Paul or Shaggy. It's more like it's custom-made for the judges of the Teen Choice Awards ("Beautiful Girls" snagged two, for Best R&B Track and Best Summer Track). The flipside is that this kind of thing can get old fast. The "suicidal, suicidal" refrain from "Beautiful Girls" might sound different and even cool for a while, but it can also become annoyingly insipid with repeated play, just as Kingston can leave hipsters complaining he's too damned sweet.

"A lot of kids look up to Sean Kingston," Kingston says. "To me, that feels like an honor. I don't feel like a role model yet... almost."

Kingston says he's sleeping less than ever before these days and "flying more than a pilot." He's already appeared as a guest on MTV's The Hills, which he hopes is just his first acting gig. Still 17, he could tick off Japan, London, and Australia as his favorite locales. But when it came time to plan his 18th-birthday bash, he chose Ocho Rios, where MTV would record the celebration and foot the bill.

Driving into Ocho Rios — "Ochi" to the locals — from Montego Bay on a Friday evening is tricky. You approach the city on a long, winding road crowded with shantytowns and jerk chicken huts that periodically fall away to reveal sublime tropical landscapes. The view is as poverty-stricken to your right as it is scenic on the left. There are traffic laws, but no one seems to follow them. Accidents abound. You hang on for dear life, and as you do, you notice the pink, yellow, and green posters whizzing by, taped to telephone poles, that say "Sean Kingston."

People in Jamaica love him, says his mom, who could not attend his birthday party because of parole restrictions. But he played a show in Jamaica on Christmas Day and flopped, at least one person says. "Him lose him culture," a cabdriver says as he whizzes through traffic. "People aren't sure if he can really do a stage show 'cause he only has three hits. Jamaicans want to see a lot of hits, like a Beenie [Man] or a Movado... He's not there yet."

But for someone with just one album, he seems to be doing all right. And when a local woman in her early 20s mentions his name that evening, all the other women around her begin to giggle and talk about how cute he is. "He doesn't need to lose a pound for me," one says. "Me love his big size and sexy voice," and she trails off singing the chorus to "Beautiful Girls."

His birthday party the next night is the talk of Ochi. There are rumors that Movado, Munga, Shaggy (who's scheduled for a walk-through), and Beenie Man will come (in fact, only Shaggy makes an appearance). Tickets are going for $60 U.S. And someone's making a killing: The party is not even open to the public.