'Baby Boy' Tyrese Grows Up

Tyrese - model, singer and now movie actor - can thank heavy traffic for putting his career in the fast lane.

Seven years ago, Tyrese couldn't scrounge up a ride from his Los Angeles high school to an audition for a Coke commercial, and by the time his music teacher took pity and drove him across town, he was more than 2 hours late. Tyrese got the audition - and the job - since the casting director was even later because of jammed roads.

"That commercial changed my life," says Tyrese, now 22. "That started my life, basically."

These days, Tyrese can afford a ride anywhere.

The Coke spot led to several others, including deals to model gear by Tommy Hilfiger and Guess. It also led to a hosting gig at "MTV Jams," then a self-titled CD, which earned a Grammy nomination for best male R&B vocal performance last year. His follow-up album, "2000 Watts," peaked at No. 4 on Billboard's R&B charts.

Tyrese's career takes a new step this month with the lead role in "Baby Boy,'' the third film in director John Singleton's 'hood trilogy that includes "Boyz N the Hood" and "Poetic Justice."

"Baby Boy" tells the story of Jody, an aimless young man from the Watts section of Los Angeles. He lives at home with his mother and shares his time between his "baby mamas." Barely more than a baby himself, Jody finds himself with two kids of his own, plus the other pending responsibilities of adulthood.

This time, Tyrese's audition didn't have any transportation problems, but was just as successful. Singleton recalls the singer walking into his audition during the spring of 1999 - with no acting background - and casually reading lines from his script.

"He hadn't had them in advance and he just started doing the character. I was so excited. I saw the character right there!" says the director. "Here I am writing about the streets of Los Angeles and he just read it off the page. He just got it."

Tyrese says the role wasn't such a stretch.

"Jody is Tyrese," he says, although he doesn't have any kids. "I've lived the drama of being a father through other people - being a young, irresponsible father through all my friends."

Still, Tyrese, who grew up in Watts, says: "I was a baby boy. But it's a side of Tyrese that I put to rest. When I had to do the movie, I had to wake that side of me back up, get through the film, and then when John hollered 'Wrap!' I just put that side of me back to sleep."

"I used to think beneath my years. Now I think beyond my years. I think of what's to come. When you're a baby boy, you're just get caught up in the moment and not thinking of the outcome."

So when Tyrese met Singleton, the singer had a mission.

"I didn't want him to give it to me because I was selling records, because I modeled and did all these other things. I wanted to go to this audition and I wanted him to feel my pain through this character," he says.

Tyrese (last name: Gibson) may have gotten out of Watts but he often returns, and sees old friends.

"It's an unfortunate and fortunate thing to be born in the ghetto," he says with an expansive smile. "The experience of coming from absolutely nothing is a perspective that you can't go and buy or live though somebody else."

When Tyrese talks about growing up and not having a quarter in his pocket, he isn't being dramatic. Like getting to that Coke audition, grabbing the city bus to school was a daily challenge.

"It was 25 cents to get on that bus and I used to walk from my house to the bus stop looking on the ground every morning to find some change."

Perhaps, then, it's no wonder that the video for Tyrese's latest single "I Like Them Girls," features the muscled, tattooed singer ripping through his old haunts on a revved-up motorcycle.

Despite a performance reminiscent of Cuba Gooding Jr.'s breakthrough turn in Singleton's "Boyz N the Hood," Tyrese prefers to concentrate on music, not acting.

"I'd rather win a Grammy," he says.