The Kingston Kid

"He's always had a love for music, and I knew he would be like this. I just didn't know it would happen this soon."

That the kid was a ham is apparently putting it mildly. According to Kathy Harris, principal at Congress Middle School in Boynton Beach, Kingston had a knack for stealing the spotlight. "Whenever there was somebody rapping in the lunchroom or after school, [he] would always jump in the middle of it," Harris says.

He was also expelled from almost every school he attended in the tricounty area. He seemed to be grappling with an internal battle: either remaining disciplined or constantly giving the finger to conformity. "Now that he's an entertainer, I can understand it a bit more, but back then, it was rough," Turner laments. "He got kicked out of Bair Middle in Sunrise, Christa McAuliffe in Boynton Beach. He couldn't even go to school in Miami he was so bad.... The list just goes on and on. Then he went to Delray Full Service, which was a school for bad kids, and he got kicked out of there.

"When he does listen, he learns. His grades weren't bad, but he made hell for the teachers."

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Back at the BankAtlantic Center, as the Y-100 Jingle Ball concert gets under way, Kingston and his inner circle are finally finding time to act their age. After shaking off all the loved ones and hangers-on, he's left with his "interior crew," consisting of 17-year-old Baltimore rapper Young Leek, 18-year-old longtime friend Hype King, 23-year-old singjay Nathan "Mirror" Salmon, and his 23-year-old DJ, Kelo, all of whom are his friends and employees.

Aside from having a record deal as an artist on Jonathan J.R. Rotem's Beluga Heights label and a contract with Epic Records, Kingston started his own record label, Time Is Money — his attempt at being a player, coach, and owner at the same time.

Now that the grown folks aren't around — save Kingston's bodyguard — the teenage crew is dancing and laughing as Miami rapper Flo Rida and his Carol City Cartel are onstage. Flo Rida is opening the show, and his hit "Low" has an audience of predominantly white kids dropping down and gyrating like they're in a nightclub. At one moment, Flo Rida takes off his shirt, revealing rock-hard abs and a physique that looks like it was sculpted in prison. The women in the audience swoon, but with his pants hanging off his ass, his underwear showing, and his shirt off, he looks juvenile. Several artists backstage are watching the performance on television. With emo-rock group Plain White T's behind him and punk-pop outfit Good Charlotte off to his left, the businessman in Kingston surfaces. "Man, you don't get no sponsors looking like that," Kingston says. "I like Flo Rida, but that look is kinda tacky."

Soon, Rick Ross is on the microphone, and his thuggy-bear voice has all the 305 hip-hop lovers cheering and most of the younger MTV fans in the building looking perplexed.

Kingston doesn't have this problem when he performs, because his style is part ragga, part Nickelodeon, yet mature enough to make grown folks of any ethnicity want to dance. It's not easy to blend hip-hop and reggae without it feeling forced or gimmicky at the pop level, but Kingston's sound seems to be second-nature. It's a good deal of what makes him so marketable and why, as a debut artist after only eight months, his album is approaching gold status (which is admirable in this down era for the music industry). His ringtone sales are already platinum.

When it's Kingston's time to perform, all four members of his stage crew plus his road manager, Steve Lobel, gather for a brief prayer and then get to work. DJ Kelo cues up the music, and Kingston runs onstage in front of 15,000 screaming South Floridians and starts singing his second hit single, "Me Love," which is full of Caribbean flair and pop-crossover appeal. As far as the eye can see, the crowd mouths every word of it.

Despite the fact that it's an arena show, the sound is next to perfect, and Kingston's vibrancy and energy are infectious. The crowd of mostly tweens and teens is responding twice as loud as it did for previous performers. Next, Kingston jumps into "Dry Your Eyes," a song he wrote for Turner while she was incarcerated. He tells the crowd his mother is in the building and dedicates the track to her. Soon the chorus starts, and Kingston is singing:

Mommy, just dry your eyes; mommy, don't you cry,

I know we've been through hard times and the struggles,

And I just wanna tell you I love you ...

I got a little money, feelin' kinda blue

'Cause it's looking like you doing 10 to 20 ...

Some day I'm gonna buy you Miami,

So when I win my Grammy

You coming, 'cause I do this for my family.