If only this guy Lexxus had just a little ambition, he might make something of himself. Ha ha. A little levity there, because if there's anything Lexxus lacks, get-up-and-go ain't it. Poised on the brink of international stardom, the deep-voiced Jamaican DJ is all too happy to run down his future plans -- for himself and for reggae as a whole. His most immediate goal is out of the way, at least -- his long-awaited debut album, Mr. Lex, was released in late June on VP Records and features the huge dancehall hits "Cook" and "Ring Mi Celli." "So if you're wonderin' what me goals are now, lemme tell you," says the personable Lexxus with no prompting, via phone from his New York hotel room. "One, I wanna be one of the artists that sell platinum. Two, I'm lookin' forward to DJ of the year, sometime. Three, Grammys is definite aim. So when I decide to quit, I got Grammys." But even those are only short-term aims. The real goal is take reggae farther into the notoriously tough American market than his heroes, legendary DJs like Yellowman and Shabba Ranks -- farther even than Bob Marley himself. "Yeah, yeah," Lexxus says excitedly. "Beyond, mon, beyond!" The enthusiasm's catching. When the 24-year old vocalist talks, you can definitely hear echoes of the kid named Christopher Palmer, who livened up his rough East Kingston neighborhood by being "the community clown. You know the class clown? I was the one everybody turned to for entertainment. "At any point where we have a large gathering, all heads would just turn to me. They know I be the one to talk shit…for hours," he says with a loud laugh. "Put on a dress, a wig. Whatever it take to have the whole place laughin', I do that. That's how I learned crowd control from a early age," he says. That desire to entertain landed Lexxus in drama school as a teenager, and won him a slot with Jamaica's top dance group, the gold medal-winning Squad One. "It's just like alla my life, I been onstage," he says. But there's a lot more to Lexxus than a successful comedy-and-dance act. He's as serious as any of reggae's new young stars about winning respect for Jamaican music -- and he's determined not to sell out his Jamaican roots to get the success he wants so badly. Translation: as much as he loves hip-hop, his own tunes are more inspired by its spirit than its grooves. "That's puttin' it right -- a Jamaican feel, with a little bit of hip-hop influence. I listen to a few hip-hop artists, like Jay-Z. That's why they call me Jigga, cause I listen to a lot of Jay-Z. Redman and Method (Man). Busta Rhymes. Those are my boys, yunno, my favorite rappers," he says. "But I try to keep this record straight dancehall. Maybe my next album we do a little bit of crossover with hip-hop artists. But we try to keep this one straight, though." It's a big change from the past decade, where reggae acts lined up to chat over hip-hop drum loops, eager to try cracking America by offering us Yanks a more familiar sound. New Lexxus tracks like "Let Those Monkeys Out" have the attitude and swagger of hip-hop -- even some of its lyrical flow and lingo -- but still sound 100 percent Jamaican. 1 | 2 | 3