fashion model; singer; actor
Personal Information
Born Tyrese Gibson on December 30, 1978; grew up in Los Angeles, CA, in Watts neighborhood; youngest of four children; mother's name Priscilla Murray.
Education: Locke High School, Los Angeles.
Career
Vocalist and model. Signed to appear in Coca-Cola television commercial, 1995; signed to RCA label; released debut album, Tyrese, 1998; album certified platinum; recorded song "Criminal Mind" for Blue Streak soundtrack, 1999; guest appearances on Martin, Sister Sister, Moesha, and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, late 1990s; album 2000 Watts slated for release, 2001.
Life's Work
With a striking physique, a mature-beyond-his-years vocal style, and a positive message and attitude, the well-muscled singer and fashion model Tyrese was a rising star at the turn of the millennium. Coming to the public's attention in a Coca-Cola commercial when he was just 16, Tyrese seemed destined to capture the spotlight with a charisma that knocked female observers, especially, off their feet. When musical talent was added into the mix, a star was born. Tyrese seemed ideally poised to exploit the close confluence between music and fashion that has recently marked the American entertainment world.
Tyrese Gibson was born on December 30, 1978, and grew up in the tough south-central Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. He was the youngest of four children raised by his single mother, Priscilla Murray. The scene of civil unrest both in the 1960s and after the Rodney King verdict in the 1990s, Watts was a neighborhood beset by drugs and gang warfare, but Tyrese was determined to avoid falling into the way of life they represented. He threw himself into one school activity after another, playing football and basketball and joining the track team. "Everything I could do to stay out of harm's way, I did," he told People.
Voted Class Clown
A popular and naturally outgoing student, Tyrese was voted most talented in his class, and also class clown. "I've always been the in-your-face, nothing-to-hide kind of guy," he recalled in People. But one school activity above all others kept him centered: music. Tyrese found encouragement and guidance from Locke High School music teacher Reggie Andrews, who commented to People that his young student "turned a negative energy around to a positive." When Tyrese was 14, he began to enter, and to win, local talent contests around Los Angeles.
Two years later, Coca-Cola advertising directors looking for fresh talent came to Locke High School. Tyrese's career got off to an unpromising start when he almost missed his audition, but he turned the situation around with his rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Ribbon in the Sky." It didn't take Coke's executives long to sign him for an upcoming television commercial. That advertisement went on to become one of the most distinctive and memorable in the company's long history of media campaigns. It featured Tyrese, boarding a city bus with an earphone radio over his head, singing quietly to himself. Though the song merely extolled the virtues of Coke as a soft drink, viewers reacted positively to the smooth stylings and natural good looks of the spot's young lead actor.
The commercial did not escape the notice of talent watchers in the Los Angeles music industry, just then in the early stages of planning a massive effort to appeal to teenage consumers by signing artists of that same age group. Pop artists such as Britney Spears, country singers such as LeAnn Rimes, and urban contemporary artists such as Brandy and Monica had demonstrated the potential appeal of teenage vocalists, and a bidding war erupted among several labels vying for the services of the hot new phenomenon. Tyrese finally signed with the RCA/BMG conglomerate in 1998. He kept a hand in the modeling arena as well, appearing in advertisements for the Tommy Hilfiger clothing firm and others.
Cowrote Debut Single
Far from being simply a pretty face that served as the vehicle for the musical and marketing ideas of others, Tyrese had considerable creative input into his debut album release, entitled simply Tyrese, which appeared in the fall of 1998. He cowrote the album's first single, "Nobody Else," and, despite the common practice of incorporating guest appearances by big-name rappers into the releases of new artists, performed the song's rap himself. The album won critical praise, and "Nobody Else" cracked the top fifteen on Billboard magazine's R&B singles chart and even crossed over to the pop top forty.
Various top creative talents in the R&B field were brought in to work on Tyrese, but Tyrese himself proved to have the versatility to succeed in several different musical styles. The follow-up to "Nobody Else," the harmony-laden "Sweet Lady," became the album's biggest hit, reaching the top spot on the R&B chart in 1999. The song earned Tyrese a Grammy award for Best R&B Male Vocal Performance at the awards ceremony held the following year. Tyrese also gained strong air play for a third single from the album, "Lately."
Tyrese immediately set about building upon the success of the album. He contributed a song, "Criminal Mind," to the soundtrack of the hit Martin Lawrence film Blue Streak, and landed a host slot on the hip-hop oriented MTV Jams program on cable television. Guest slots on television series flowed his way: he appeared on Martin, Sister Sister, Moesha, and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper. He appealed to audiences of many different backgrounds; though firmly rooted in the R&B and hip-hop genres, he expressed a desire to collaborate musically with country superstar Garth Brooks. The pursuit of sheer exposure was the smartest move Tyrese could have made, for his physical appearance was remarkable.
Embarked on Weight Training
Sporting a bald head shaved since age 16, a pierced lower lip (the ring he wore was dropped in the year 2000), and nine tattoos, Tyrese was best known for his bodybuilder physique. MTV veejay Ananda Lewis, quoted in People, spoke admiringly of his "12-pack abs." But few knew of the concentrated stretch of weightlifting that the entertainer had put into forging his new physical image, which had not come naturally to him at all. "I had to get in shape for my first video," he told Ebony. "I wasn't in shape at all. My trainer, Sandy Alexander Cochran, got me in shape in three months. What you see in that video is just three months of work." The work paid off: in Ebony's words, "[H]e has one of those bodies that might as well be made of neon for all the attention it attracts."
In late 1999, Tyrese became the first male model under exclusive contract to the successful Guess jeans line. Despite his newfound success he stayed in touch with his Watts roots, appearing at a community festival there in the year 2000, working with inner-city young people, visiting schools, and consistently speaking out against the scourge of drugs. His purchase of a plush suburban home for his mother in the spring of that year only endeared him further to his legions of female fans. The year 2000 also saw Tyrese hard at work on his sophomore CD release, 2000 Watts, slated to appear in the spring of the following year.
Awards
Grammy award, Best R&B Male Vocal Performance, for "Sweet Lady," 2000.
Works
Selected discography
- Tyrese, RCA, 1998.
- 2000 Watts, RCA, 2001.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Ebony, October 1999, p. 62.
- Jet, June 5, 2000, p. 41.
- People, November 13, 2000, p. 111.
- PR Newswire, May 30, 2000, p. 0233.
- WWD, November 11, 1999, p. 13.
- Additional information was obtained on-line at http://reaction.live.advance.net/entertainment/tyrese/, http://www.allmusic.com, http://www.guess.com/gspot/models/tyrese0/, http://www.latinmoves.com/lm/bate/tyrese.htm, http://www.musicstarpages.com/tyrese/.
— James M. Manheim
