Issue Date: June 17, 2001

He's a triple treat
He mastered modeling. His first CD went platinum. Now "MTV Jams" host Tyrese makes his film debut in John Singleton's latest.

By Jeannine Amber

He may be the closest thing we have to a 21st-century Renaissance man. At 22, Tyrese (he goes by only one name) has managed to stake a claim in virtually every corner of the entertainment world. He has shown up on TV -- in the lead for a Coca-Cola commercial and as host of "MTV Jams" -- and has adorned billboards as a muscled model for Guess? jeans. Now, in addition to the recent release of "2000 Watts", the follow-up to his platinum debut CD, Tyrese has a potentially star-making role in "Baby Boy", John Singleton's "companion piece" to his Academy Award-nominated 1991 movie "Boyz N the Hood".

"I feel like I'm cutting in line," says Tyrese, one of "People" magazine's "Sexiest Men Alive" in 2000. "It's not like I've had the opportunity to be a co-star or do extra work. I haven't done anything. But the pressure is crazy."

That may be because "Baby Boy" is as difficult a movie to carry as it is to categorize. On the surface, it's the intimate story of an aimless womanizer with two babies by different women, but on a deeper level, it is a vivid, resonant portrait of Los Angeles street life. "It's a movie about the complexities of the young black man's psyche," Singleton says of the project, originally conceived as a vehicle for rapper Tupac Shakur, killed in 1996. In the movie, Tyrese is a charismatic hustler who still lives at his mother's, where he putters around with remote-controlled lowrider model cars between back-and-forth trips to see his "baby mommas."

Playing a character like this was a change of pace for Tyrese, who has no kids and is "back on the dating scene" after separating from his girlfriend of more than three years. "I now know what a woman is because of her," he says. "It just didn't work out. I made some 'oopsies.' But I've learned how not to run off a good woman [again]."

To flesh out his role, he worked closely with the film's "reality checker," or technical adviser. That gives the picture a heightened sense of realism and truth. "There's a scene where Tyrese is in the playground," pushing some kids on a swing, says Big Cat, a real-life Rolling 60s Crip. "Everywhere he looks there are women, and it finally dawns on him: There are no men in the park. That ought to be a wake-up call to black fathers. We're not there with our children. We're not there to guide them."

Tyrese, and Tamara LaSeon Bass in a scene from the motion picture "Baby Boy." Eli Reed, Columbia Pictures

Tyrese was one of those kids. In some ways, his upbringing resembled that of his character in "Baby Boy." Tyrese was raised by a single mother, with whom he had a troubled relationship. "When I was young, my mother would get a boyfriend and just bug out," says Tyrese, who moved out at 17. "Some mothers would never put a man above their children, but a lot of women do. I call it being desperate for love to where you want to do whatever you can to make this man comfortable so he won't leave."

He did most of his growing up in the streets of the gang-infested Watts section of Los Angeles, where he dreamed of being a sanitary engineer, of all things. "I used to go, like, eight houses up the street and help the trash men load up," Tyrese says, sitting in a midtown Manhattan hotel lobby. "I always asked them questions. I did research. I knew about the medical benefits, dental benefits, retirement plans. That's what I wanted."

Working as a garbage collector might have been his fate if not for a neighbor who was so impressed when she heard the 14-year-old sing that she went and got her cousin, who "just went crazy." That was enough to inspire him. Later that year, Tyrese entered a local talent show and won first place. "It was just like, 'This is where I belong,' " he says now. "I always wanted to be the center of attention. I was the class clown at every school I ever went to."

The choices he makes now will determine his place in Hollywood. Singleton is convinced that Tyrese will be in constant demand. "When 'Baby Boy' comes out, everybody and their momma are going to want him to be in their movie. He just has a glow about him," says the director credited with discovering Ice Cube and Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. "He has an energy that he puts out. It's what allowed him to survive in the streets."

If nothing else, "Baby Boy" has elicited a lot of memories for Tyrese, who says he's earned a newfound respect for his mother and surprised her with a fully decorated house in southern California's Riverside County. He sends her money regularly so she can "just sit on her butt" if she wants. While he takes out the trash, no doubt.