"You know, we wanna reach the level where music can hit without we have to put it on a hip-hop track. Where you can go up in a Yankee club and hear somebody sing 'Action,'" he says, singing a few bars of the Terror Fabulous hit, "on a real genuine reggae track, and everybody's lovin' it." Another mistake Lexxus is determined not to make is letting his Jamaican roots wither. He points to other would-be superstars who lost touch with the island, and paid for it when American listeners got tired, or failed to respond. "I'm gonna be workin' off the island. Cause that's where it all starts, yunno. And if you're not out there, you're not out anywhere around the world. That's where the vibe's goin' on, and the vibe changes quickly in Jamaica." Lexxus found that out the hard way. After he made a splash as a 16-year-old DJ with Kingston's Super Dee sound system, and scored an early hit with "Own A Home" in 1992, Jamaican listeners turned their backs on him. His next releases were ignored, and things got slow enough that his mother was forced to use the line young musicians have been getting since…well, since there've been mothers and musicians. "There were times when my mom would be like, 'Why you don't get to work? This t'ing's not workin' out for you. Go get a job, part-time or somethin'," recalls Lexxus, who got a year of training in "waitering, catering and hotel managing" after graduating from Trenchtown High. "But I never stopped to listen to that. Even when I had no shoes, it was like, I know I can do it. I KNOW I can do it. Fuck everybody else. I know I can do this," he says, sounding as defiant as he must have back then. "This is all I know to do. I do not know how to fix a car. I do not know how to build 'ouse, yuh nuh me say? All me life, I been dealin' with crowd. So it has to be…I don't know if it's dancin', I don't know if it's movie, or DJing. But I know my life would be in the limelight." He's philosophical enough now to offer, "I guess the whole thing is, that when it's your time, it's your time. Nothing happens before its time." And Lexxus' time really began in 1997, when he hooked up with famous producers Steely and Clevie and began a modest string of hits like "Boogie Woogie." Even that comeback almost derailed, though. Lexxus moved to New York City that year, seeking an international record deal. While he was away from the island, his momentum disappeared. So when he got a call in late 1998 from his management, telling him he was getting some scattered airplay in Jamaica, he knew it was time to come home. "I say, 'Yunno, that's just the phone call I need to hear,'" he says. And he got back to the island just in time time for Kingston's biggest annual dancehall concert, Sting. "If we could just fuck this up, this could be a little 'ighlight," he told his manager. The only problem was, Lexxus wasn't even on the bill. Even after some finagling arranged it, he ended up with the less-than-plum time slot of 3 a.m. And when he finally took the stage, the impatient local rowdies had been pelting performers with bottles for a while. "I wonder if these people gonna do this shit to me, a nobody. Cause that would be so embarrassin'!" he says. "But for some reason, as soon as I got on the stage, the people started lovin' me. Like I said, I had crowd control from a very early age. I know all I gotta do is keep hittin' 'em right, keep givin' 'em the jab." Lexxus kept jabbing, and by the dawn, he'd not only stolen the show, he'd made his reputation. He followed up with another hot set at Dancehall Night during the Montego Bay Reggae Sunfest in August 1999, dressed in an all-leather getup and spitting out hits like the just-call-for-sex smash "Ring Mi Cellie." 1 | 2 | 3