Giving actors making forays into pop music a good name the world over, Tyrese Gibson got into show-business at the tender age of 16. He only decided that he wanted to be a singer two years earlier and after being discovered singing while on the bus, he was ushered into the spotlight by appearing in a major advert for Coca-Colla. By the mid-90’s he’d appeared in a number of modelling shoots by the likes of Guess? and Tommy Hilfiger and by 1998 he’d managed to secure a record contract with RCA Records. His first single “Nobody Else”, was a mild hit, squeaking into the top forty of the Billboard Hot 100 at number 36, but his first album would make him a true star.
His self-titled debut was released in September 1998, it debuted on the charts at number 17 and at around the same time, Tyrese became a VJ on the weekday TV Show MTV Jams. The slot on the show catapulted him to an even higher degree of popularity, meaning that his third single “Sweet Lady” reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, stayed on the chart for 25 weeks and netted him a Grammy award nomination for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance mere months after his twentieth birthday. His follow up album “2000 Watts” was also highly succesful, selling over 500’000 copies and being certified Gold with aplomb.
As Tyrese’s acting career grew, his music career may have slowed down but it still produced the hits, with his 2002 single “How You Gonna Act Like That” being a legitimate smash hit that peaked at number seven on the Hot 100. Ever since then, Gibson has been massively succesful at everything he’s tried his hand at. He produces hit albums and singles in his music career to this day. He headlines the Fast and Furious franchise on the silver screen. He is even a New York Times best-selling author twice over with his books “How To Get Your Own Way” and “Manology: Secret’s Of Your Man’s Mind Revealed”. It would be nauseating if he wasn’t so good at what he does, and the best way of seeing his talent is by catching him live as soon as possible. Highly recommended.
More recently, he’s been best-known for his appearances in movies, particularly the Fast and Furious franchise, but Tyrese Darnell Gibson actually made his name as a singer-songwriter in the R&B scene, and a successful one at that. His self-titled debut went to number one in the U.S. in 1998 and eventually went platinum, with sales well in excess of one million copies. Later, he’d release another two gold-certified records - 2000 Watts and I Wanna Go There - and whilst he never quite reached the dizzy heights of his debut album again, he retained a significant cult fanbase, continuing to pack out intimate clubs on both sides of the Atlantic with his legendarily smooth live show, which saw him backed by an expansive live band. In recent years, his focus has primarily been on his acting career, but he’s also made a return to the recording studio with Ginuwine and Tank, contemporaries of his in musical terms, as part of TGT; their debut album Three Kings went in at number three on the U.S. albums chart, helped in no small part by subtly-titled lead single ‘Sex Never Felt Better’, and their tour across their homeland - as well as select dates in the UK - met with rave reviews from fans and critics alike.