These days Tyrese, 22, an R&B star, fashion model and MTV veejay (who dropped his surname when he broke into showbiz), is taking home much more than pocket change. On Oprah last Mother's Day, he surprised Priscilla, 43, with a fully furnished four-bedroom house in Riverside, Calif., so she too could move out of the hood. Her son, who flashes his chiseled abs for Tommy Hilfiger and Guess? jeans and flexes his acting chops as the star of director John Singleton's new movie Baby Boy, gives Priscilla full credit for the transformation in both their lives: "My mother always said, 'The only way to predict the future is to create it.' "
His own future looks as bright as, well, 2000 Watts, the title of Tyrese's latest CD, which has already fit up Billboard's Top 10. Tyrese, his '98 debut album, went platinum, and last year he was named favorite new soul/R &B artist at the American Music Awards. "I worked hard every day to be the opposite of what was around me growing up," he says. "My success is all a rebellion against my past."
Ironically, Baby Boy, which has earned mostly positive reviews, marks a return to that same treacherous turf. Jody, the feckless man-child Tyrese plays, lives with his single mother in a Watts saturated with violence and despair. "He understood the story because he had lived it," says Singleton, 33, himself a Watts native. And though Singleton calls him "genuinely humble," he says Tyrese, at his audition, "looked, walked and smelled like a movie star."
That self-confidence was hard-earned. Tyrese's father left the family when Tyrese was 5, leaving Priscilla to raise the children alone. "I didn't have time to dream," says Tyrese, who was bullied and sometimes beaten by local gang members. "I was busy surviving." Yet music was always his touchstone.
"When Mom was struggling," explains sister Shonta, now 27, owner of an L.A. talent agency, "she played music to make her feel good. We heard Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow, Barry White, gospel, every genre. I believe it was my mom's soul when she listened to music that Tyrese absorbed."
When he was 14, a neighbor heard him singing in the street and "went crazy over my voice," says Tyrese. "I realized that maybe I had something." Encouraged, he began auditioning for school plays and entering talent competitions, determined to sing his way out of Watts. "We would have 8 to 10 talent shows a year," recalls his Locke High School music teacher Reggie Andrews (whom Tyrese calls "the father I never had"). "Tyrese was in every one. Afterward he would take the video of the show and study his performance to get better. He never tried to be anyone else."
Nor did he give in to the hopelessness he found all around him. "Me and my friends," says Tyrese, "were the positive surrounded by the negative. We knew gangs, heard stuff about who they killed; we just kept moving."
He stayed in school, and in 1995, when a talent scout called Locke in search of a fresh face to star in a Coke commercial, Tyrese, then 16, won the part. The next year Guess? offered him a modeling job. TV guest spots on Hangin' with Mr. Cooper and Moesha soon followed. "It was weird," says Tyrese, who got both his diploma and an RCA recording deal in 1996. "I would go to school and then go to parties with big celebrities like Puffy. It was wild to be in both worlds."
But the ride was just beginning. By 1999 he was counting down hip-hop videos for MTV Jams, and now comes his film debut. Yet there is such a thing as too much exposure. Despite daily workouts with a trainer to stay buff, viewing his in-the-buff love scenes—amid hundreds of spectators at the Baby Boy premiere—proved agonizing for the star. "I'm a real private person," says Tyrese, who admits he couldn't watch. "I tried to cover my mama's eyes too! She was just screaming, you know."
His female fans may feel differently. Still, Tyrese, who is single, says he's not rushing romance. "I know lots of pretty girls," he says, grinning. "But I'm not ready to settle down."
Meanwhile, he still has Watts on his mind. Last year Tyrese pledged to raise $10 million to build a youth center there, with computers, musical instruments and a library. "I don't want the children's dreams," he explains, "to be as small as the houses they live in."
Ting Yu
Vicki Sheff-Cahan in San Diego
- Contributors:
- Vicki Sheff-Cahan.
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